The first person to win back-to-back Oscars for ‘Best Director’ is an American hero
People spend their entire lives dreaming about winning at the Oscars, and that includes young kids aspiring towards greatness from the start of their cinematic hopes in small towns somewhere as much as it includes the biggest names in movie-making, where so many go whole careers without bagging a trophy.
As much as creatives can claim that they’re not in it for the awards and the accolades, there is something about the Oscars. When Timothée Chalamet got up at the SAG Awards and stated he was “in pursuit of greatness”, it was clear that it wasn’t about the trophy he was holding as he set his sights on the Oscars and that coveted ‘Best Actor’ prize.
While the awards show has fallen into a lot of controversy over its years for snubbing female creatives, or creatives of colour, and as plenty big names like to say in interviews that they’re not fussed about it, year after year, winners get up on that stage and sob. More so than any other trophy in the season, the Oscars have that effect. People have their win announce and collapse into an emotional outpouring about how much this means, how long they’ve dreamt about being exactly here and how proud they feel of themselves, thanking their loved ones for raising them up to be ready. Each year, there’s a tear-jerker as the biggest names around achieve goals right there and then.
For some, that moment will never come, and for others, it’ll come again and again and again. For Walt Disney, the record holder for the person with the most Oscars, it came 26 times, by which point surely the impact must have worn off.
But there was only one director who ever had that repeat win come the following year, not even giving him a chance to bask in one victory before the next one hit.
Who was first to win back-to-back Oscars for ‘Best Director’?
Over his career, John Ford made Oscars history more than once; for starters, Ford holds the record for the director who has won the coveted ‘Best Director’ prize the most, taking it home four times for his movies, The Informer, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, and The Quiet Man.
For anyone contemporary to take that record off him, they’d have to get a move on. Of living and working directors, only Clint Eastwood, Oliver Stone and Steven Spielberg are in the running with two ‘Best Director’ trophies each, so they’d have to quickly put out two more hits.
But Ford also holds another record as the first and only to win ‘Best Director’ back to back, as The Grapes of Wrath in 1940 was immediately followed by How Green Was My Valley in 1941, with Ford picking up the wins at the 13th and 14th Annual Academy Awards.
However, was he fazed? Not at all. In fact, Ford didn’t even attend the ceremonies. “I didn’t show up at the ceremony to collect any of my first three Oscars,” he said, infamously listing his excuses as, “Once I went fishing, another time there was a war on, and on another occasion, I remember, I was suddenly taken drunk.”
