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![Gene Kelly performing in the film Singin' in the Rain, Cary Guffey in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Spike Lee as Mookie in Do the Right Thing Gene Kelly performing in the film Singin' in the Rain, Cary Guffey in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Spike Lee as Mookie in Do the Right Thing](https://cdn.aarp.net/content/dam/aarpe/en/home/entertainment/movies-for-grownups/info-2021/oscars-best-picture-film-snubs/_jcr_content/root/container_main/container_body_main/container_body1/container_body_cf/container_image/articlecontentfragment/cfimage.coreimg.50.932.jpeg/content/dam/aarp/entertainment/movies-for-grownups/2021/04/1140-oscars-best-picture-snubs.jpg)
If history has taught us anything, it's that the Academy Awards aren't infallible. If you look back over the 90-plus years of best-picture contenders, there are some pretty glaring omissions — movie masterpieces that were never even nominated for Hollywood's most prestigious prize. So on the eve of this year's awards, here's our list of the 10 biggest snubs for best picture (in chronological order) in Oscar history.
Bringing Up Baby (1938)
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Has there ever been a lighter, faster, fizzier film from the golden age of the Hollywood screwball comedy? Not by a long shot. This rat-a-tat classic from director Howard Hawks stars Katharine Hepburn as a dizzy heiress whose pet leopard named Baby leads a bookish paleontologist (Cary Grant) on a madcap chase from Manhattan to Connecticut. The carbonated, opposites-attract chemistry between Hepburn and Grant is lightning in a bottle — so electric that both leads virtually shoot off sparks. Best of all, the film's charms haven't aged a day. Ridiculously, Bringing Up Baby not only was overlooked for a nomination for best picture, but it received no Oscar nominations at all!
Watch it: Bringing Up Baby, on Amazon Prime, Fandango Now, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube
The Women (1939)
Most film historians regard 1939 as the single greatest year in movie history. And the evidence for that argument is certainly bulletproof. Here's just a sampling of that year's releases: Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Wuthering Heights, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stagecoach and Dark Victory. Still, even in such gold-plated company, it's hard to wrap your head around the fact that George Cukor's crack all-female comedy about a group of women scheming and swapping verbal barbs and side-eyed glances over the arrival of a man-stealing shopgirl (Joan Crawford) was completely shut out at the Oscars that year. In addition to Crawford, Norma Shearer and Rosalind Russell manage to steal the show as the claws come out and the fur flies.
Watch it: The Women, on Amazon Prime, Fandango Now, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube
Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
Stop anyone on the street and ask them what the greatest, or at least the most famous, musical in movie history is. Nine times out of 10, you'll get Singin’ in the Rain as the answer. And yet … this classic from writers Betty Comden and Adolph Green that stars Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Jean Hagen, Cyd Charisse and the splish-splashiest star of all, Gene Kelly, wasn't deemed worthy of a best-picture nomination. A loving send-up of Old Hollywood, this may be the most infectious and rightfully iconic display of shoot-the-works song-and-dance joy that ever came out of MGM's dream factory. For shame, Oscar voters.
Watch it: Singin’ in the Rain, on Amazon Prime, Fandango Now, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube
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