On the same night that Hattie McDaniel took home the first ever Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in Gone With the Wind, the first time ever the award was given to a black actress, the film earned an unprecedented seven more awards. The epic tale of love in a Reconstruction-era South had all the hallmarks of a great film: a storyline romanticising a very recent past, the most popular actor of the age in Clark Gable, glorious full-color rendering (still fairly new among films then), and of course the popularity of the source material itself, Gone With the Wind, the novel.On this day, February 29, 1940, Gone With the Wind nearly swept the Academy Awards, winning every major category save for Best Actor (Clark Gable’s role).

The film also won a Technical Achievement Award, a certificate handed out by the Academy to mark “accomplishments that contribute to the progress of the industry.” That award was given to R. D. Musgrave, who set up a lot of the superb mechanical effects in the film, “For pioneering in the use of coordinated equipment in the production.”