The Academy Awards, turning 80 next year, have long been touted as a tribute to the best in film making. But on dozens of occasions, Academy voters have missed the boat on classic films, or awarded Oscars to arguably unworthy winners or nominees.

Early Oscar winners

Some of the earliest Oscars went to films almost forgotten today. The 1928-29 Oscar, only the second year of the award, went to Broadway Melody, an all-talking, all-singing musical that even had a brief Technicolor sequence. King Vidor’s, The Crowd, considered a classic of American silent film, was released the same year but did not garner any Oscar attention. Mary Pickford, the Canadian-born superstar known as ‘America’s Sweetheart’, won for Coquette, although many at the time thought Pickford won the Oscar thanks to her intense campaigning for the award, including having all the voting judges over to her famous estate, Pickfair, for tea. The controversy was enough to cause changes in the voting system the next year.