Often cited as the greatest year in movie history, all ten films nominated for 1939’s Best Picture Oscar have been released on DVD. Indeed, some of them have been released over and over. For example, perennial favorites Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz were both given deluxe packaging in their Blu-ray debuts late last year. Criterion’s Blu-ray of Stagecoach releases this week.

Long regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, David O. Selznick’s production of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind was officially directed by Victor Fleming, but with behind the scenes help from original director George Cukor as well. Even those who dismiss the film on critical grounds can’t deny the fact that the film is the most successful of all time in terms of ticket sales. More people have probably seen the Civil War tale than any film in history with the possible exception of The Wizard of Oz.

Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara, Clark Gable as Rhett Butler, Olivia de Havilland as Melanie Hamilton, Leslie Howard as Ashley Wilkes, Thomas Mitchell as Gerald O’Hara, Hattie McDaniel as Mammy and Butterfly McQueen as Prissy lead a cast of colorful characters that are seared in our collective memory. Leigh and de Havilland both credited clandestine meetings with the fired Cukor as having sharpened their performances. The film won a then record ten Academy Awards including Best Picture, Actress (Leigh), Supporting Actress (McDaniel), Director (Fleming), a technical award for its camera equipment and an honorary one for William Cameron Menzies for his use of color.

No less of a legendary on-going success, The Wizard of Oz, also credited to Fleming, but with the help of several other directors including Mervyn Leroy and King Vidor, was a box office disappointment in its initial release. The film was hugely successful in its 1949 and 1955 reissues after which it became a TV staple starting in 1957. While it may be true that more people have seen Gone With the Wind than The Wizard of Oz, it’s a safe bet that more people have seen The Wizard of Oz more times than they have seen Gone With the Wind. Who can resist returning again and again to Dorothy’s trip “over the rainbow”?

Judy Garland as Dorothy, Frank Morgan as the Wizard, Ray Bolger as the Scarecrow, Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion, Jack Haley as the Tin Man, Billie Burke as the good witch Glinda and Margaret Hamilton as Miss Gulch and the Wicked Witch of both the East and the West are characters we will always cherish. The film won just two of the eight Oscars it was nominated for, both for its music. Technically, Judy Garland’s Special Juvenile Oscar was not given for a specific film but for her work throughout the year. She also starred in Babes in Arms (available on DVD as part of the Mickey Rooney & Judy Garland Collection).

John Ford won the New York Film Critics’ award as Best Director for Stagecoach but lost the Oscar to Victor Fleming for Gone With the Wind.

Ford’s Stagecoach is often called a western for people who don’t like westerns and a John Wayne movie for people who don’t like John Wayne. It was very much a landmark of the genre, the first so-called “adult” western in which the characters, all of whom are societal outcasts, have real life problems that still resonate today.

Wayne is the Ringo Kid, falsely accused of a crime he didn’t commit, Claire Trevor is Dallas, a hardboiled prostitute, and Thomas Mitchell, in his Oscar winning role, is Doc Boone, a drunk. Donald Meek, John Carradine, George Bancroft, Andy Devine and Louise Platt have problems of their own.

Mitchell, though he won his Oscar for Stagecoach, might have easily won for any of his other four films that year: Gone With the Wind; Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; Only Angels Have Wings or The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Frank Capra was the quintessential American director and no film was more quintessentially American than Capra’s Best Picture nominee Mr. Smith Goes to Washington which the demagogues in the U.S. Senates tried to suppress. James Stewart won the New York Film Critics Award for his astounding performance as the naïve young Senator who learns fast on his feet on the job. He won the Oscar the following year for The Philadelphia Story although it is universally believed he really won for losing for his magnificent work in this film.

Jean Arthur, Oscar nominated Claude Rains, Edward Arnold, Thomas Mitchell and Oscar nominated Harry Carey, Sr. are all unforgettable.

The man who did win the Best Actor Oscar this year was Robert Donat for another towering performance as the shy schoolmaster who rises to the top of his profession in spite of his shortcomings in Sam Wood’s Best Picture nominee Goodbye, Mr. Chips. A luminous Greer Garson won the first of her seven Best Actress nominations as Mrs. Chipping (“Chips” was a nickname) in her Hollywood film debut despite the brevity of her role. The ending of the film after all these years still has the power to make a stone weep: “I thought I heard you saying it was a pity… pity I never had any children. But you’re wrong. I have. Thousands of them. Thousands of them… and all boys.”

The New York film Critics Award for Best Picture went to William Wyler’s film of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights in a compromise between the factions supporting Gone With the Wind and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. In addition to its Best Picture and Director nominations, it was nominated for seven other awards including Best Actor Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff and Best Supporting Actress Geraldine Fitzgerald as Isabella. It won for Gregg Toland’s Cinematography.

Geraldine Fitzgerald was in another Best Picture nominee, Edmund Goulding’s Dark Victory featuring Bette Davis in her third Oscar nominated performance as a dying socialite. Max Steiner was nominated for his somber score but both this and his more famous score for Gone With the Wind lost to Herbert Stothart’s score for The Wizard of Oz.

A more popular tearjerker, albeit one with comedic undertones, was Leo McCarey’s Best Picture nominee Love Affair with Oscar nominated Irene Dunne, Charles Boyer and Oscar nominee Maria Ouspenskaya in the roles later played by Deborah Kerr, Cary Grant and Cathleen Nesbitt in McCarey’s even more popular 1957 remake, An Affair to Remember. Beware all DVDs of Love Affair which is in the public domain. They’re all pretty bad.

The only out-and-out comedy among 1939’s Best Picture nominees was Ernst Lubitcsch’s Ninotchka advertised with the slogan “Garbo laughs”. It worked. Not only were audiences drawn to theatres to see the usually morose Greta Garbo laugh, her fellow actors honored her with her sixth Best Actress nomination.

The tenth slot went to Lewis Milestone’s film of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men Burgess Meredith, Betty Field, Charles Bickford and Lon Chaney, Jr. as slow-witted Lennie.

Among the legendary films that didn’t make Oscar’s short list were George Cukor’s The Women with Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, Mary Boland and more; William Dieterle’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame with Charles Laughton, Maureen O’Hara, Thomas Mitchell, Edmond O’Brien and Cedric Hardwicke; Howard Hawks’ Only Angels Have Wings with Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Thomas Mitchell, Richard Barthelmess and Rita Hayworth; William A. Wellman’s Beau Geste with Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, Robert Preston, Susan Hayward and Brian Donlevy; George Stevens’ Gunga Din with Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Sam Jaffe; John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln with Henry Fonda and Alice Brady and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes with Michael Redgrave, Margaret Lockwood and Dame May Whitty, all of which are available on DVD.

Worth checking out in addition to this week’s Blu-ray debut of Stagecoach is the 5oth Anniversary Edition of Spartacus on Blu-ray.