The Academy Award for Best Story was an

Academy Award The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...

given from the beginning of the Academy Awards until 1956. This award can be a source of confusion for modern audiences, given its co-existence with the

Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay The Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay is the Academy Award for the best screenplay Film adaptation, adapted from previously established material. The most frequently adapted media are novels, but other adapted narrative formats include st ...

and

Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay The Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay is the Academy Award for the best screenplay not based upon previously published material. It was created in 1940 as a separate writing award from the Academy Award for Best Story. Beginning with th ...

. The Oscar for Best Story most closely resembles the usage of modern

film treatment A film treatment (or simply treatment) is a piece of prose, typically the step between scene cards (index cards) and the first draft of a screenplay for a motion picture, television program, or radio play. It is generally longer and more detaile ...

s, or prose documents that describe the entire plot and characters, but typically lack most dialogue. A separate

screenwriter A screenplay writer (also called screenwriter, scriptwriter, scribe or scenarist) is a writer who practices the craft of screenwriting, writing screenplays on which mass media, such as films, television programs and video games, are based. ...

would convert the story into a full screenplay. As an example, at the 1944 Academy Awards, producer and director Leo McCarey won Best Story for '' Going My Way'' while screenwriters Frank Butler and Frank Cavett won Best Screenplay. The elimination of this category in 1956 reflects the decline of Hollywood's

studio system A studio system is a method of filmmaking wherein the production and distribution of films is dominated by a small number of large movie studios. It is most often used in reference to Hollywood motion picture studios during the Golden Age of Hol ...

Winners and nominees

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

Notes

References