April 10, 1972 – Bedknobs and Broomsticks Wins Academy Award for Special Visual Effects
“Treguna, Mekoides, Trecorum Satis Dee.”
On April 10, 1972, the 44th Academy Awards were held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles, California. Nominated for five Academy Awards, the live-action feature Bedknobs and Broomsticks managed to go home with one for Best Visual Effects, beating out the film When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth by Hammer Films, distributed by Warner Brothers. One of the effects used included the sodium screen vapor process (originally developed by Ub Iwerks), which was used mostly for the flying bed scenes and involved a three-strip Technicolor camera that removed the sodium light by use of a prism. The sodium process has since been replaced by green screens and blue screens, as well as compositing via computers.
