For a long time, Best Animated Short has been one of those Academy Award categories where the average viewer has seen exactly none of the nominees. In a high-profile year, one or two of the contending titles may be familiar thanks to pre-feature exposure in theaters or a choice DVD inclusion. For the most part, though, the cartoons are foreign, if not in origin than in lack of distribution.
This year’s unknown competitors reinforced the idea that the award is merely a kind gesture from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences to the animation industry, the members of which are the only people who will care. It certainly wasn’t always like that. Before the category was added alongside two other short film classes for the 5th Academy Awards, there were just nine awards of nominated films competing. The year was 1932 and cartoon shorts were a popular staple of moviegoing.
Mickey Mouse was one of the biggest names in Hollywood and his producer Walt Disney rode that success to more innovation, just a few years away from feature-length cartoons. Disney adopted Technicolor with the Silly Symphony Flowers and Trees , which would become the premiere Oscar winner for animated short. Unlike the decades to come in which Disney’s studio would essentially go unrivaled in the field of feature-length animation, the 1930s were marked by competition.
While Disney would earn every one of the decade’s Cartoon Short Subjects Academy Awards, other animation departments would eventually taste glory and, before that, regularly received nominations. More importantly, they offered something different and well-liked in its own right. For Paramount Pictures, Max Fleischer and his brother Dave scored hits with Betty Boop, Popeye the Sailor, and later Superman. Warner Bros.