Oscars: What Was The First Animated Movie To Be Nominated For Best Picture?

General audiences are often more familiar with animated movies that receive Oscar nominations than with many live-action nominees, and it would be very surprising to find someone who isn’t familiar with the first animated movie to receive a nod for Best Picture. Despite the fact that animated feature films have been part of the popular culture since Disney premiered Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, only three animated films have been nominated for Hollywood’s biggest award. None of these movies won the coveted statue, and it wasn’t until the 64th Academy Awards that the first broke into the category.

It wasn’t until 2001 that the Oscars implemented the Best Animated Feature Category to honor the hard work that goes into creating some of Hollywood’s most beloved films. This category includes winners such as Shrek, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse, and Encanto, in which Disney breaks its worst habit. Disney usually dominates the Best Animated category, sometimes winning through their ownership of Pixar movies like Toy Story 3 and Up.

Coincidentally, those Pixar films are two-thirds of the trio that have received nominations in the Oscar’s Best Picture category. The first animated nominee was Beauty and the Beast, which lost Hollywood’s top award to The Silence of the Lambs at the 1992 ceremony. Since the category for Best Animated Feature had not yet been invented, the popular Disney movie didn’t have the chance to win that award as did its successors.

Disney is well known for the consistent quality of its animated movies, but Beauty and the Beast stands out amidst the studio’s impressive filmography. It is one of Disney’s best adapted fairy tales, featuring a strong female lead;  it also combines beautiful animation with what is arguably Alan Menken and Howard Ashman’s best musical collaboration. While the film didn’t take home the biggest prize of the night, Menken received the awards for Best Original Scores and Best Original Song (for the film’s title song), sharing the latter with Ashman.

In fact, Disney movies had received many nominations for their musical offerings prior to the Academy’s recognition of Beauty and the Beast as a contender for Best Picture. Disney had a song from Encanto nominated in 2022 as well, though perhaps not its best. Unfortunately, the Academy’s voting body doesn’t seem to take animated movies as seriously as it does live-action movies, perhaps because children are often the target audience. However, animated movies tend to have a longer hold on the memory of the general public, as viewers are excited to share them with their children. Beauty and the Beast was the first animated film to make the Oscars begin take the medium seriously, and has gone down in history for it.

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