Which filmmaker has won the most ‘Best Director’ Oscar Awards?
The Academy Awards, also known as the Oscars, held its first ceremony in 1929 to a mere audience of 270 people, handing out just 15 awards over the course of 15 minutes. Since then, the ceremony has become the most prestigious in the film industry, with 3,140 accolades received by filmmakers since its inception.
Not only did the Academy Awards become the first worldwide entertainment awards ceremony, but it also paved the way for the likes of the Grammys (music), the Tony Awards (theatre) and the Emmys (television).
After broadcasting on the radio in 1930, the Academy Aways aired on television for the first time in 1953. Now, it is live streamed as one of the year’s biggest events, attracting audiences worldwide. The ceremony has birthed lots of recognisable pop culture events over the years – such as the wrong film being announced as Best Picture and Will Smith slapping Chris Rock.
The ceremony has received a lot of criticism for its lack of diversity amongst nominees, as well as for favouring certain genres such as historical romantic epics and biographical melodramas. Yet the prestige of winning an Oscar is still highly coveted, perhaps due to the historical element of winning such a famous prize.
The first Best Director category was split into two – drama and comedy – and saw Frank Borzage win for 7th Heaven and Lewis Milestone for Two Arabian Knights. This was scrapped the following year, which saw Frank Lloyd awarded for The Divine Lady. Over the years, some of the most well-respected filmmakers have taken home Best Director awards, including Elia Kazan, Francis Ford Coppola, Miloš Forman, Martin Scorsese and Jane Campion, who became the third woman to win the prize.
However, there has been one director that has received more awards than anyone else: John Ford. Known for his Westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Ford began his filmmaking career in the 1910s, making his debut film in 1917 entitled The Tornado, which is now considered a lost film.
Over his lifetime, Ford made more than 140 films, becoming a pioneer of sound films, with his first talkie, Naopolean’s Barber, completed in 1928. He was nominated five times for Best Director, as well as receiving multiple nominations for Best Picture and Best Documentary.
In total, Ford won four Best Director awards between 1935 and 1952. These were for The Informer, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley and The Quiet Man. He also took home two Best Documentary awards for The Battle of Midway and December 7th: The Movie.
He achieved a feat that only a few directors have also achieved – winning two consecutive years in a row. Both Alejandro González Iñárritu and Joseph L. Mankiewicz have also achieved this – the former for Birdman and The Revenant and the latter for A Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve.
