48th Academy Awards

The 48th Academy Awards were presented March 29, 1976 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles. The ceremonies were presided over by Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw, George Segal, Goldie Hawn, and Gene Kelly. This year, ABC took over broadcast rights from NBC, and continues to broadcast them today. (NBC's coverage of the 1976 NCAA Final Four aired opposite the ceremony; during the presentation of the Best Film Editing award, the winner was jokingly announced (by presenter Elliott Gould) as "Indiana, 86–68"; the Indiana Hoosiers had won the NCAA Final Four that night.)

Contents

• Winners Nominees
• Academy Honorary Award
• Irving G Thalberg Memorial Award
• Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award
• Presenters and performers
• References

Miloš Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest made a "clean sweep" of the major categories: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director and Best Screenplay (Adapted). It was the second of three films to date to accomplish the sweep, following It Happened One Night in 1934 and preceding The Silence of the Lambs in 1991.

French actress Isabelle Adjani received her first nomination for Best Actress this year, making Adjani, 20 at the time, the youngest actress to be nominated in the leading actress category, breaking the record set by 22-year-old Elizabeth Hartman in 1967. This record would later be surpassed by 13-year-old Keisha Castle-Hughes in 2004, and again in 2013 by nine-year old Quvenzhane Wallis. Adjani also presented the Best Film Editing award that night along with Gould who delivered the Indiana joke during the presentation.

At age 80, George Burns became the oldest acting and Best Supporting Actor awardee, a record which stood until Jessica Tandy won Best Actress in 1989. For males, Burns was succeeded by Christopher Plummer, who won Best Supporting Actor in 2012 for Beginners at the age of 82.

Jaws was followed 25 years later by Traffic for a film that won all its nominations except Best Picture. Jaws is one of the few films to be nominated for Best Picture but not for directing, acting, or writing.