Winning an Academy Award is pretty special. Even more special is doing it in such a way that it’s the only time it’s ever happened.
Only movie to win both an Oscar and a Razzie…
The Oscars go to the year’s best achievements in movies. The Razzies, or “Golden Raspberry Awards,” are handed out to the worst. Only one movie has somehow managed to get both: Wall Street (1987). Michael Douglas won a Best Actor Oscar, and Daryl Hannah won the Razzie for Worst Supporting Actress.
Only Best Picture nominee based on a TV show…
It was a Hollywood craze in the ’90s to make movies out of old television favorites. Audiences could choose from, to name a few, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Mod Squad, My Favorite Martian, The Flintstones, Maverick, and The Fugitive. That 1993 action thriller starring Harrison Ford as the man wrongly accused of murder is the only movie that started life on the small screen to get the biggest of all Oscar nominations. (It lost to Schindler’s List.)
Only Oscar nominee more than four hours long…
The 1963 epic Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton was, at the time, the most expensive movie ever made. It earned a Best Picture nomination, and at four hours and eight minutes, it’s the longest nominee in history. (Longest actual winner of Best Picture: the three hour, 54 minute Gone with the Wind.)
Only one-letter-titled movie to get a Best Picture nomination…
The 1969 political thriller Z. That’s just one letter!
Only X-rated movie to win Best Picture…
The only adults-only movie to win the big prize was Midnight Cowboy (1969). (The previous year’s winner: the G-rated, squeaky-clean musical Oliver!)
Only actor to be nominated twice in the same year for the same part…
Lots of actors have been nominated twice in the same year—in 2004, the year Jamie Foxx won Best Actor for Ray, he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Collateral. But Barry Fitzgerald was nominated for both Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor for Going My Way (1944). Voters agreed on his greatness, but not on the nature of his part. Rule changes would prevent this from ever happening again. (Fitzgerald did win, but only for Best Supporting Actor.)
Only non-CGI animated movie to get a Best Picture nomination…
Disney’s traditionally-animated 1991 version of Beauty and the Beast was the first cartoon of any kind to get a nomination in the top category. Ten years later, a separate Best Animated Feature category was created, but Pixar’s computer-animated Up and Toy Story 3 have snuck into Best Picture.