| Number: | 36 |
| Award: | Academy Awards |
| Date: | Monday, April 13, 1964 |
| Site: | Santa Monica Civic Auditorium Santa Monica, California, U.S. |
| Host: | Jack Lemmon |
| Producer: | Richard Dunlap George Sidney |
| Director: | Richard Dunlap |
| Best Picture: | Tom Jones |
| Most Wins: | Cleopatra and Tom Jones (4) |
| Most Nominations: | Tom Jones (10) |
| Network: | ABC |
| Last: | 35th |
| Next: | 37th |
The 36th Academy Awards, honoring the best in film for 1963, were held on April 13, 1964, hosted by Jack Lemmon at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Santa Monica, California. This ceremony introduced the category for Best Sound Effects, with It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World being the first film to win the award.
Best Picture winner Tom Jones is the only film to date to receive three Best Supporting Actress nominations; it also tied the Oscar record of five unsuccessful acting nominations, set by Peyton Place at the 30th Academy Awards.
Patricia Neal controversially won Best Actress for her role in Hud, despite having a relatively small amount of screen time and having expected a baby in England. Melvyn Douglas won Best Supporting Actor for the same film, making it the second and, to date, last film to win two acting awards without being nominated for Best Picture (the other being The Miracle Worker the previous year).
At age 71, Margaret Rutherford set a then-record as the oldest winner for Best Supporting Actress, a year after Patty Duke set a then-record as the youngest winner. Rutherford was also only the second Oscar winner over the age of 70 (the other was Edmund Gwenn), as well as the last person born in the 19th century to win an acting Oscar. This was the only year in Academy history that all Best Supporting Actress nominees were born outside the United States.
Sidney Poitier became the first African American actor to win Best Actor, and was practically the only winner in an acting category present at the ceremony, as all the other winners were abroad. Upon receiving the wrong envelope, Sammy Davis Jr. remarked, "wait until the NAACP hears about this!"[1]
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge was the first Oscar-winning film to have aired on network television prior to the ceremony.
Nominations announced on February 24, 1964. Winners are listed first and highlighted with boldface.[2]
These films had multiple nominations:
The following films received multiple awards.
Sidney Poitier's Best Actor win for Lilies of the Field[3] marked the first time a Black man won a competitive Oscar.[4] This came five years after his first nomination for Best Actor in 1958's The Defiant Ones.[3] Poitier had been aware of the significance of Hattie McDaniel having won an Oscar in the 1940 ceremony at the time that he accepted his Best Actor Oscar, and he was the only winner present at the ceremony.[1]
It would take almost forty years for another African-American male to win Best Actor, when Denzel Washington won in 2001 for Training Day.[3]
Sammy Davis Jr. was accidentally given the wrong winner's envelope when he was supposed to announce the award for Best Music Score for an Adaptation or Treatment, instead announcing the winner for Best Music Score - Substantially Original: John Addison for Tom Jones. After a confused round of applause followed by silence, Davis acknowledged his mistake (joking, "Wait 'til the NAACP hears about this!"),[1] and, having been given the right envelope, read the actual winner: Andre Previn for Irma la Douce.
Davis Jr. then presented Best Music Score - Substantially Original, sarcastically asking "Guess who the winner is?" after reading all the nominees.