It’s a commonly held notion that All the President’s Men; Network and Taxi Driver were the Oscar front-runners and that Rocky came out of nowhere to win the 1976 Oscar for Best Picture. That wasn’t at all the case. Rocky, whose artistic reputation has not held up as well as its stellar competition, was in fact a front-runner from the start of awards season.

Rocky, which had been a box-office phenomenon tied Network to win the Los Angeles Film Critics Award, the first given that year, although Network’s Sidney Lumet was the sole winner of their Best Director award.

The National Board of Review gave its Best Picture award to All the President’s Men, followed on their top ten list by Network and Rocky. President’s Men’s Alan J. Paakula won their Best Director prize. The New York Film Critics then chose the same Best Picture and Director. The National Board of Review went along with All the President’s Men for Best Picture, but named Taxi Driver’s Martin Scorsese as Best Director.

The Golden Globes awarded Rocky its Best Picture – Drama award over All the President’s Men and Network,but named Network’s Lumet as Best Director. The Directors Guild was the first award Rocky’sJohn G. Avildsen won as a Best Director prize.

When the Oscar nominations were announced, Network and Rocky led the pack with ten each, followed by All the President’s Men with eight and Bound for Glory with six. Taxi Driver was the fifth Best Picture nominee with four nominations.

The previously unknown Sylvester Stallone became only the third person to be nominated for writing and acting in the same year. He was following in the footsteps of Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles.

When all was said and done, Rocky, the underdog movie about the underdog prizefighter, had won three Oscars for Best Picture, Director and Editing and spawned five sequels to date.

The prescient expose of the machinations of television executives, Network,and the retelling of the downfall of a U.S. president, All the President’s Men, each took home four awards. Network won for Best Actor (Peter Finch), Actress (Faye Dunaway), Supporting Actress (Beatrice Straight) and Original Screenplay. Former Best Actor winner William Holden and Supporting Actor nominee Ned Beatty had also been in the race. All the President’s Men won for Best Supporting Actor (Jason Robards), Art Direction and Sound.

Hal Ashby’s Bound for Glory, a biographical drama with music of the life of Woody Guthrie, took home Oscars for Cinematography and Adapted Score. Taxi Driver went home empty-handed, but nevertheless made a major star of Best Supporting Actress nominee Jodie Foster as a 12 year-old hooker and a superstar of former Supporting Actor winner Robert De Niro, who was nominated for his first lead Oscar.

Other films Oscar liked this year included Seven Beauties; Face to Face; Cousin, Cousine; Carrie; Obsession; The Omen; Marathon Man; The Front; The Shootist; and remakes of King Kong and A Star Is Born.

Italian director Lina Wertmuller became the first woman to receive an Oscar nomination for directing. She was nominated in both the writing and directing categories for her black comedy, Seven Beauties, in which Best Actor nominee Giancarlo Gianni played a lowlife hood who winds up in a Nazi concentration camp. The film was also nominated for Best Foreign Film.

Swedish master Ingmar Bergman was nominated for the sixth of nine times for his direction of Face to Face,for which Liv Ullmann was nominated for Best Actress as a psychiatrist undergoing a mental breakdown of her own.

The French romantic comedy Cousin, Cousine was nominated for three Oscars including Best Foreign Film, Original Screenplay and Actress, Christine Barrault.

Cult director Brian De Palma hit the big time with two 1976 releases, both of which were Oscar nominated.

The horror classic, Carrie, from Stephen King’s novel received nominations for Best Actress Sissy Spacek, her first, and Best Supporting Actress, Piper Laurie, for whom the film was her first since her last Oscar nomination for 1961’s The Hustler.

The suspense filled Obsession was nominated for its score by Bernard Herrmann. It was one of two posthumous nominations Herrmann, who died in 1975, received that year. The other was for Taxi Driver. Herrmann’s only Oscar had been for 1941’s The Devil and Daniel Webster, the same year he was nominated for Citizen Kane.

Hermann lost to the legendary Jerry Goldsmith who won his only Oscar out of nineteen nominations for his eerie score for Richard Donner’s horror classic, The Omen. He had also been nominated for Best Song, “Ave Satani”, from the same film.

John Schlesinger’s Marathon Man,from William Goldman’s best-selling novel, brought Laurence Olivier his first and only nomination in the Supporting Actor category for his menacing portrayal of the ex-Nazi dentist who terrorizes Dustin Hoffman.

A screenplay nomination went to Martin Ritt’s film about the black list, The Front,featuring Woody Allen in a rare film he did not direct himself.

John Wayne’s final film, Don Siegel’s The Shootist,in which his character is dying of cancer, as was the real life actor, received its only nomination for Art Direction.

Moving the action from the Empire State Building to the World Trade Center, the updated King Kong was nominated for Best Cinematography and Sound and won a Special Achievement Oscar for its visual effects which didn’t yet have a category of their own.

Moving its narrative from the movie business to the music business, the latest incarnation of A Star Is Born was nominated for Best Cinematography, Sound and Original Score and won for Best Song, “Evergreen”.

All films discussed have been released on DVD in the U.S. except Face to Face and Cousin, Cousine.

This week’s new DVD releases include Get Low and Stieg Larson’s Dragon Tattoo Trilogy.