2nd Academy Awards

The 2nd Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best films released between August 1, 1928 and July 31, 1929. They took place on April 3, 1930 at an awards banquet in the Cocoanut Grove of The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

Radio coverage began with this ceremony, with a local broadcast by KNX, Los Angeles.

As the ceremony was being held more than eight months after the end of the eligibility period, it was decided that the 3rd Academy Awards would be held in November 1930, so as to bring the awards ceremony closer to the relevant time period. As a result, 1930 was the only year in which two awards ceremonies were held in the same calendar year.

The second ceremony included a number of changes over the first. Most importantly, it was the first presentation for which the winners were not announced in advance. Additionally, the number of categories was reduced from twelve to seven.

The 2nd Academy Awards is unique in being the only occasion where there were no official nominees. Subsequent research by AMPAS has resulted in a list of unofficial or de facto nominees, based on records of which films were evaluated by the judges.

The Divine Lady is the only film to ever win Best Director without a Best Picture nomination, excluding the first year where there was an award for comic director.

This is the only year in which no movie won more than one Oscar. The Broadway Melody became the second of seven films (Wings, Grand Hotel, Cavalcade, Hamlet, The Sound of Music, and Titanic are the others) to win Best Picture without a writing nomination, and the first of three to win Best Picture and nothing else (Grand Hotel and Mutiny on the Bounty are the others).