Cimarron (1931 film) being "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?") to receive nominations in every eligible category. It won for three of them, including Best Picture. It would win the first of only two Best Picture Oscars for the studio, the other being awarded to 1946's "The Best Years of Our Lives". It was the first Western to win the Best Picture award, and it would not be until 1990 when "Dances with Wolves" won, that another Western would garner that honor. Cimarron (1931 film) Cimarron is a 1931 Pre-Code Western film directed by Wesley Ruggles, starring Richard Dix and Irene Dunne, and featuring
Academy Award for Best Picture "The Reader". However, now any number of producers on a film can be nominated for Best Picture, should they be deemed eligible. For the first ceremony, three films were nominated for the award. For the following three years, five films were nominated for the award. This was expanded to eight in 1933, to ten in 1934, and to twelve in 1935, before being dropped back to ten in 1937. In 1945, it was further reduced to five. This number remained until 2009, when the limit was raised to ten and later adjusted in 2011, to vary between five and ten.