40th Academy Awards

40th Academy Awards
Date	April 10, 1968 (originally scheduled for April 8)
Site	Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, Santa Monica, California, United States
Hosted by	Bob Hope
Produced by	Arthur Freed
Directed by	Richard Dunlap
Highlights
Best Picture	In the Heat of the Night
Most awards	In the Heat of the Night (5)
Most nominations	Bonnie and Clyde and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (10)
TV in the United States
Network	ABC
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The 40th Academy Awards honored film achievements of 1967. Originally scheduled for April 8, 1968, the awards were postponed to two days later, April 10, 1968, because of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. Bob Hope was once again the host of the ceremony.

Due to the increasing rarity of black and white feature films, the awards for cinematography, art direction and costume design were combined into single categories rather than a distinction between color and monochrome. The Best Picture nominees were an eclectic group of films reflecting the chaos of their era. The event was the first one since the 1948 awards show to feature film clips from the Best Picture nominated films.

This year's nominations also marked the first time that three different films were nominated for the "Top Five" Academy Awards: Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay. The three films were Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. However, the winner of Best Picture was producer Walter Mirisch and director Norman Jewison's thriller/mystery film, In the Heat of the Night (with seven nominations and five wins – Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Screenplay, Best Film Editing, and Best Sound).

The Graduate is, as of the 88th Academy Awards, the last film to win Best Director and nothing else.

Due to an all-out push by Academy President Gregory Peck, 18 of the 20 acting nominees were present at the ceremony. Only Katharine Hepburn and the late Spencer Tracy, who was nominated posthumously, were missing.

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