The Life of Emile Zola was the first film to receive ten nominations and the second consecutive biographical film to win Best Picture, following the previous year's The Great Ziegfeld. Luise Rainer received the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Good Earth, earning her the distinctions of being the first actor to win two Academy Awards and the first to win consecutive acting awards, following her win for The Great Ziegfeld. Luise Rainer, who didn't think anyone could win in two consecutive years, stayed at home with her husband, playwright Clifford Odets, on the night of the ceremony. She was informed of her win by telephone, hastily dressed herself up, and rushed out the door to collect her second Oscar, which was said to have "jinxed her".[4]
Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the world's first full-length Technicolor animated feature film with sound and widely seen as one of the greatest motion pictures of all time, received only one nomination, for Best Original Score. The following year, the Academy presented Disney an Honorary Academy Award (consisting of one full-size Oscar statuette and seven miniature statuettes on a stepped base) "for creating Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs [1937], recognized as a significant screen innovation which has charmed millions and pioneered a great new entertainment field for the motion picture cartoon". This is a rare case of a film being recognized in two successive ceremonies.
This was the first year in which every film nominated for Best Picture received multiple nominations.
Mack Sennett "for his lasting contribution to the comedy technique of the screen, the basic principles of which are as important today as when they were first put into practice, the Academy presents a Special Award to that master of fun, discoverer of stars, sympathetic, kindly, understanding comedy genius – Mack Sennett".
Edgar Bergen "for his outstanding comedy creation, 'Charlie McCarthy'".
Museum of Modern Art Film Library "for its significant work in collecting films dating from 1895 to the present and for the first time making available to the public the means of studying the historical and aesthetic development of the motion picture as one of the major arts".