For the third time in Academy Awards history, all five Best Director nominees all had their films nominated for the Best Picture award. This has happened before in 1957 and 1964 and would not happen again until both 2005 and 2008
Of the four actors who won the acting Oscars, only Maureen Stapleton attended the event. Henry Fonda, Katharine Hepburn, and John Gielgud were absent.
The Best Makeup category was introduced for the first time in this event.
The only shared credit of Vincent Price (who with Kim Hunter co-presented the Best Makeup award to Rick Baker for An American Werewolf in London (1981)) and Jack Nicholson (who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Eugene O'Neill in Reds (1981)), other than their having co-starred nearly two decades earlier in The Raven (1963).