Here’s an easy one for serious Oscar trivia geeks: what’s unusual about Hal Mohr’s 1935 Best Cinematography win for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream?” I offer no prize, but pat yourself on the back if you knew that Mohr was the first and only person to win an Oscar on write-in votes — or in other words, that he won despite not being nominated.
Mohr’s victory was the result of a groundswell of industry support for his work on the Best Picture nominee after he surprisingly failed to secure a nomination; the year before, Bette Davis was the beneficiary of a more famous, but less successful, write-in campaign for her acclaimed, un-nominated work in “Of Human Bondage.”
As it turned out, she received fewer votes than two of the three actresses who beat her to the nomination, but the legend stuck — and Davis got a blatant make-up Oscar a year later.