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Academy Award for best original screenplay
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Academy Award for best original screenplay

Academy Award
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Also known as: Best Original Screenplay, Best Screenplay – Original, Best Writing – Original Screenplay
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Academy Award
screenplay

award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, located in Beverly Hills, California. It honors outstanding achievement by screenwriters for an original screenplay (not one adapted from another work, such as a play or novel) from a given year, as determined by the academy’s voting members.

At the inaugural Academy Awards ceremony, in 1929, the award recognized the work in films released from August 1, 1927, to August 1, 1928. The next four ceremonies honored work in films released from August to July. The 6th ceremony honored work from August to December, and beginning with the 7th ceremony (1935), only work in movies released the previous calendar year was eligible for consideration.

This award has had a complicated history. In the first ceremony (1927–28), an award was given for best original story; an award for title writing was also given. A story was a prose narration of the action in the film that typically would later be converted to a screenplay by another screenwriter. In the second and third ceremonies (1928–30), an award was given for best writing, with no distinction between original work and adaptations. From the 4th (1930–31) to the 12th (1939) ceremonies, an award was again given for best original story, with a screenplay award that was the equivalent of the modern award for best adapted screenplay. Starting with the 13th ceremony (1940), original writing received two awards, one for best original story and one for best original screenplay, with the exception of the 21st ceremony (1948), wherein only one award was given, for best screenplay. A separate award for best story and screenplay was added for the 22nd ceremony (1949), and the category for best story was dropped as a separate award in the 30th ceremony (1957). The “story” was dropped from the name of the award at the 47th ceremony (1974), and the award had various names before it finally settled on best original screenplay at the 75th ceremony (2002). The winning screenwriters are given a gold-plated statuette known as an Oscar.

Woody Allen has won the most Academy Awards for best original screenplay (three). Below is a list of the winning screenwriters and the films for which they won. The years indicate when the eligible films were released.

1920s and 1930s

  • 1927–28: original story: Ben Hecht (Underworld); title writing: Joseph Farnham (no specific film was mentioned); special award: Charles Chaplin for acting, writing, directing, and producing The Circus
  • 1928–29: none
  • 1929–30: writing: Frances Marion (The Big House)
  • 1930–31: original story: John Monk Saunders (The Dawn Patrol)
  • 1931–32: original story: Frances Marion (The Champ)
  • 1932–33: original story: Robert Lord (One Way Passage)
  • 1934: original story: Arthur Caesar (Manhattan Melodrama)
  • 1935: original story: Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (The Scoundrel)
  • 1936: original story: Pierre Collings and Sheridan Gibney (The Story of Louis Pasteur)
  • 1937: original story: William A. Wellman and Robert Carson (A Star Is Born)
  • 1938: original story: Dore Schary and Eleanore Griffin (Boys Town)
  • 1939: original story: Lewis R. Foster (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington)

1940s and 1950s

  • 1940: original story: Benjamin Glazer and John S. Toldy (Arise, My Love); original screenplay: Preston Sturges (The Great McGinty)
  • 1941: original story: Harry Segall (Here Comes Mr. Jordan); original screenplay: Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles (Citizen Kane)
  • 1942: original motion picture story: Emeric Pressburger (49th Parallel; released in the United States as The Invaders); original screenplay: Ring Lardner, Jr., and Michael Kanin (Woman of the Year)
  • 1943: original motion picture story: William Saroyan (The Human Comedy), original screenplay: Norman Krasna (Princess O’Rourke)
  • 1944: original motion picture story: Leo McCarey (Going My Way); original screenplay: Lamar Trotti (Wilson)
  • 1945: original motion picture story: Charles G. Booth (The House on 92nd Street); original screenplay: Richard Schweizer (Marie-Louise)
  • 1946: original motion picture story: Clemence Dane (Vacation from Marriage); original screenplay: Muriel and Sydney Box (The Seventh Veil)
  • 1947: motion picture story: Valentine Davies (Miracle on 34th Street); original screenplay: Sidney Sheldon (The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer)
  • 1948: motion picture story: Richard Schweizer and David Wechsler (The Search)
  • 1949: motion picture story: Douglas Morrow (The Stratton Story); story and screenplay: Robert Pirosh (Battleground)
  • 1950: motion picture story: Edna and Edward Anhalt (Panic in the Streets); story and screenplay: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, and D.M. Marshman, Jr. (Sunset Boulevard)
  • 1951: motion picture story: Paul Dehn and James Bernard (Seven Days to Noon); story and screenplay: Alan Jay Lerner (An American in Paris)
  • 1952: motion picture story: Fredric M. Frank, Theodore St. John, and Frank Cavett (The Greatest Show on Earth); story and screenplay: T.E.B. Clarke (The Lavender Hill Mob)
  • 1953: motion picture story: Dalton Trumbo (Roman Holiday) (award presented to Ian McLellan Hunter, who was a front for the blacklisted Trumbo, who was awarded posthumously in 1992); story and screenplay: Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch, and Richard Breen (Titanic)
  • 1954: motion picture story: Philip Yordan (Broken Lance); story and screenplay: Budd Schulberg (On the Waterfront)
  • 1955: motion picture story: Daniel Fuchs (Love Me or Leave Me); story and screenplay: William Ludwig and Sonya Levien (Interrupted Melody)
  • 1956: motion picture story: Dalton Trumbo (The Brave One) (award presented to the alias Robert Rich; Trumbo received the award in 1975); original screenplay: Albert Lamorisse (The Red Balloon)
  • 1957: story and screenplay: George Wells (Designing Woman)
  • 1958: story and screenplay: Nedrick Young and Harold Jacob Smith (The Defiant Ones) (the blacklisted Young received the award under the pseudonym Nathan E. Douglas)
  • 1959: story and screenplay: story by Russell Rouse and Clarence Greene, screenplay by Stanley Shapiro and Maurice Richlin (Pillow Talk)

1960s and 1970s

  • 1960: story and screenplay: Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond (The Apartment)
  • 1961: story and screenplay: William Inge (Splendor in the Grass)
  • 1962: story and screenplay: Ennio de Concini, Alfredo Giannetti, and Pietro Germi (Divorce—Italian Style)
  • 1963: story and screenplay: James R. Webb (How the West Was Won)
  • 1964: story and screenplay: story by S.H. Barnett, screenplay by Peter Stone and Frank Tarloff (Father Goose)
  • 1965: story and screenplay: Frederic Raphael (Darling)
  • 1966: story and screenplay: story by Claude Lelouch, screenplay by Claude Lelouch and Pierre Uytterhoeven (A Man and a Woman)
  • 1967: story and screenplay: William Rose (Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner)
  • 1968: story and screenplay: Mel Brooks (The Producers)
  • 1970: story and screenplay: Francis Ford Coppola and Edmund H. North (Patton)
  • 1971: story and screenplay: Paddy Chayefsky (The Hospital)
  • 1972: story and screenplay: Jeremy Larner (The Candidate)
  • 1973: story and screenplay: David S. Ward (The Sting)
  • 1974: Robert Towne (Chinatown)
  • 1975: Frank Pierson (Dog Day Afternoon)
  • 1976: Paddy Chayefsky (Network)
  • 1977: Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman (Annie Hall)
  • 1978: story by Nancy Dowd, screenplay by Waldo Salt and Robert C. Jones (Coming Home)
  • 1979: Steve Tesich (Breaking Away)

1980s and 1990s

2000s and 2010s

2020s

  • 2020: Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman)
  • 2021: Kenneth Branagh (Belfast)
  • 2022: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Everything Everywhere All at Once)
  • 2023: Justine Triet and Arthur Harari (Anatomy of a Fall)
The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by J.E. Luebering.