We're doing all the nominees for both the writing awards as well as Best Director today. It made sense to me: there are only six movies to discuss. See, at the time, ballots were supposed to be limited to three nominees per category - categories made up of seven, six, or twelve were the result of ties in the voting stage. Nowadays, there are rules to prevent that from happening, just as the Academy no longer allows write-in candidates. With the exception of said write-ins - the FBI propaganda thriller "G" Men in Original Story, Captain Blood in both Screenplay and Director - the writing and directing nominees kept it to three per, with Screenplay and Director lining up perfectly.
There weren't as many "precursors" back in this time, mostly just the New York Film Critics Circle. Like the Academy, they named John Ford the Best Director of the year for The Informer, but they did cite another filmmaker as runner-up, an already notable British director whose latest works were enough to achieve breakthrough success in the United States: Alfred Hitchcock, for The Man Who Knew Too Much and The 39 Steps. It would be another five years before he came to Hollywood and was formally welcomed into the club of Academy Award Nominees, with Rebecca. But that's a story for another day.
Beginning with Best Original Story, the nominees are:
