by Nathaniel R

101 DAYS DALMATIANS until Oscar. For today's Oscar trivia did you know that neither the Disney animated classic of 1961 nor the live action Glenn Close starring remake in 1996 earned Oscar nominations?

Everyone knows that the Academy didn't have a Best Animated Feature category until the 21st century began but prior to that Disney's beloved animated classics were often honored in Original Song. But "Cruella de Vil," the hit single that dog-loving composer Roger writes in the film, the one that earns him enough cash to feed and care for 101 pups in that film's happy ending was not so nominated...

The film did score a Grammy nomination for "Best Children's Recording".

The live action remake also found some awards favor netting a Comedy Actress nomination for Glenn Close at the Golden Globes and a Best Hair and Makeup nomination at BAFTA. Zip with Oscar, though. But here's a real cool awards statistic that had somehow escaped my movie awards-loving psyche until now...

Did you know that BAFTA has had an Animated category for decades?!? I somehow didn't know this and I initially I couldn't imagine why it had escaped my movie-awards-loving psyche all these years. But some research revealed why. The category was actually a catch-all where shorts were welcome to compete with features and it was erratic at best. 101 Dalmatians did win the 1961 BAFTA beating two shorts The Do-It-Yourself Cartoon Kit and something called For Better... For Worse (the latter of which doesn't even have an IMDb page). 

Anyway here's the history...

BAFTA WINNERS BEST ANIMATED FILM
(Their early category combining features and shorts... sort of)

1954 Song of the Prairie (Czechoslovokia)
1955 Blinkity Blank (Canadian short... which beat Disney's Lady & The Tramp feature)
1956 Gerald McBoing! Boing! on Planet Moo (US short... also nominated for the Oscar)
1957 Pan-tele-tron (British short which beat an Oscar nominated short called The Magic Fluke)
1958 The Little Island (British short by legendary animator Richard Williams who is still working today, most recently Oscar nominated in 2015 for the violent short called Prologue)
1959 The Violinist (a US short that was also nominated for the Oscar)
1960 Universe (this was an animated documentary short and was nominated for documentary short  at the Oscars)
1961 101 Dalmatians
1962 The Apple (a British short)
1963 Automania 2000 (a British short that beat the American short The Critic  which featured Mel Brooks heckling abstract cartoons -- at the Oscars they were both nominated for short and The Critic won instead)
1964 The Insects (British short -- this one you can actually watch on Amazon Prime. It had no competition that year as the sole nominee. Curious)
1965 Do Be Careful Boys (British instructional short about safety in the workplace)
1966 no prize
1967 Notes on a Triangle (Canadian short)
1968 Pas de Deux (Canadian short -- it was also nominated for the Oscars alongside another Bafta nominee La Maison de Jean-Jacques but they both lost the Oscar to Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day)
1969 no prize
1970 Henry 9 til 5 (British short which was not nominated at the Oscars but at BAFTA it beat the Oscar winner that year It's Tough to be a Bird) 
1971 no prize
1972 no prize
1973 Tchou-Tchou (Canadian short)
1974 Hunger (US short which was also nominated for the Oscar)
1975 Great (Isambard Kingdom Brunel) (British animated documentary short about a famous engineer which also won the Oscar)

We'll stop there.

"Why?" you ask. Well, the prize seems to get more and more erratic between the mid 60s and early 70s. By 1976 the honor is subsumed by a category called Best Short Fictional Film which an animated film wins and then simply an all purpose Best Short. But at some point in the 80s it returns and is still called "Best Animated Film" but with only ever shorts nominated. It's all very confusing! So, in fact 101 Dalmatians is the only animated feature ever to win BAFTA's "Best Animated Film" for the first few decades of its name-changing existence.

BAFTA finally installed a Best Animated Feature category in 2006, five years after Oscar though they actually awarded one such film first, technically speaking, with 101 Dalmatians (1961). Their animated short category seemed to stabilize around 1992. So no wonder we never knew about the disorienting first few decades of their prizes for this medium! 

This is, if you want to get serious about it, why we've worried about Oscar becoming more erratic about their rules (and the size of categories) in the past 10 years. Even if people don't entirely realize why they take some institutions less seriously than others, we believe that the answer is simply CONSISTENCY. The Oscars are the most consistent of major awards shows by a huge margin. Yes they have added and removed and retitled categories and changed rules but in a far less frequent and less 'on a whim' nature than any of their competitors in awards show glory. This is the unspoken / unacknowledged reason why they're still taken more seriously than most other major awards shows like The Grammys, Emmys, or Globes and definitely more than minor ones like the "what the hell are we doing?" erraticism of organizations like BAFTA and the BFCA and such. You can't finish first in any race if you're constantly reinventing your own wheel and forgetting the rules of the race each time you finish a lap!