21st Academy Awards 21st Academy Awards The 21st Academy Awards features numerous firsts. It was the first time a non-Hollywood production won Best Picture, "Hamlet" and the first time an individual (Laurence Olivier) directed himself in an Oscar-winning performance. It was the first Academy Awards ceremony to be giving awards for Best Costume Design. John Huston directed two films in this awards year for which his actors won Oscars: his father, Walter Huston, in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre"; and Claire Trevor for "Key Largo". The Huston family won three Oscars that evening. The ceremony was moved from the Shrine Auditorium to
John Huston to play the young Union soldier who deserts his company out of fear, but later returns to fight alongside them. MGM, however, saw the message of the movie as too antiwar. Without Huston's input, they cut down the running time of the film from eighty-eight minutes to sixty-nine, added narration, and deleted what Huston felt was a crucial scene. The movie did poorly at the box office. Huston suggests that it was possibly because it "brought war very close to home." Huston recalls that at the preview showing, before the film was halfway through, "damn near a third of the