1940 Best Picture:
Rebecca

Competition:  All This and Heaven Too, Foreign Correspondent, The Grapes of Wrath, The Great Dictator, Kitty Foyle, The Letter, The Long Voyage Home, Our Town, The Philadelphia Story

Other Winners:
Best Actor: James Stewart, The Philadelphia Story
Best Actress: Ginger Rogers, Kitty Foyle
Best Supporting Actor: Walter Brennan, The Westerner
Best Supporting Actress: Jane Darwell, The Grapes of Wrath
Best Director: John Ford, The Grapes of Wrath

Cast: Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders, Judith Anderson, Gladys Cooper, Nigel Bruce, Florence Bates 

Storyline: Based on the book by Daphne DuMaurier, Joan Fontaine plays a simple girl on a luxury liner, traveling as a companion to an elderly woman.  On board, she meets the mysterious Maxim de Winter, and romance blossoms.  He sweeps her off of her feet, and drags her back to his mansion, where echoes of his past life with his first wife come back to haunt the second Mrs. de Winter. 

Did it deserve to win: Why not?  The Bette Davis flick, The Letter would have also been a strong contender, and it would have been nice to see the screwball comedy, The Philadelphia Story, take the prize.  Meanwhile, The Grapes of Wrath has also become a bona fide classic. Rebecca, however, gets extra points for being David O. Selznick's dreaded follow up to Gone With the Wind.  

Critique: A few items make Rebecca a noteworthy film.  Hitchcock was just coming into the spotlight back then, and this film put his name on the map.  Also, Laurence Olivier was becoming a huge star.  They both had pictures the previous year, but this was the one that made them popular.  

Despite its melodramatic feel, Rebecca is an eerie suspense drama, with great performances by the female stars, Joan Fontaine and Judith Anderson.  Anderson's nasty Mrs. Danvers has since become embraced a lesbian icon.  

And finally, this was Selznick's pick to follow up his monstrously successful, Gone With the Wind.  While it's much smaller in stature, it's certainly a top notch film.

Best Scene:  The Underwear Drawer!  Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers gives Joan Fontaine a tour of Rebecca's bedroom, stopping to admire the panties.  The film was cited by The Celluloid Closet for its lesbian undertones, at a time when lesbians were often portrayed as vampire-like shrews. 

Behind the Scenes:  Rebecca was nominated for eleven Academy Awards, but only won two of them.  The win for Best Picture seemed the most critical, however, as David O Selznick was hoping for a personal repeat, having won the Best Picture for Gone With the Wind, the previous year.  Alfred Hitchcock failed to garner a win for Best Director, even though he had a second film also nominated for Best Picture, Foreign Correspondent.

Hitchcock went on to direct some of the greatest films of the forties and fifties, including Read Window, Vertigo and Psycho.  This was the only film to win the Best Picture Oscar.  He was never awarded for Director.  

Hitchcock, like many of the nominated actors,  didn't attend the ceremony that year, however rumor has it that he was nervously pacing in his hotel room, while listening to the show on the radio.

Joan Fontaine and sister, Olivia de Haviland carried on a life long feud that was particularly heated in the 1940's, when they were often nominated against each other.  Fontaine was nominated for Rebecca, but would win an Oscar the next year for Suspicion.  Sister Olivia would trump her by winning for two films, To Each His Own and the Heiress, later in the decade.  

Laurence Olivier wanted his wife, Vivien Leigh to play the lead role.  He treated Fontaine badly on the set when she was finally cast in the role.  Hitchcock played upon this by having everyone on the set actually hate her.  It shook her up, and made her very uneasy, thus, according to Hitchcock, enhancing her performance.  

Another major Hollywood icon, Charlie Chaplin, did not gain Oscar favor for his satire, The Great Dictator.  He and Hitchcock are, to this day, regarded as two of the most glaring omissions from the Academy's list.

Alfred Lunt gives the Oscar to Jimmy Stewart for The Philadelphia Story.

Also in 1940:

June 14: Germans parade through Paris.

September 7:  Airforces wages the Battle of Britain.

September 30:  Hitler's long awaited aerial attack on Britain begins.

December 29:  FDR calls the US an 'arsenal of democracy'.

The Academy Awards could now add suspense to their lexicon, not because of the film that was selected for Best Picture, but because of a rule change that was added this year, when the previous year, the Los Angeles Times announced the winners prior to the ceremony.  The Academy traditionally gave out the winners names to the news agencies in order for them to make press deadlines.  Going forward, nobody, but a third party accounting firm, would know the winners until the actual ceremony.  

A trip to the beach house leads to a chance meeting with a strange old man who lives in fear of the first Mrs. de Winter.

Mrs. Danvers is one scary chick!