Peace on Earth Nobel peace prize nominee? Urban legend?

[Fredrik]

Hi all,

I was wondering about the 1939 MGM cartoon Peace on Earth. There seems to be a widespread notion that this cartoon received a nomination for the Nobel peace prize, but I cannot find any evidence to back that up. Notably it does not appear in the official nominee database of the Nobel committee: http://nobelprize.org/nomination/peace/database.html

I'm giving a 16mm Christmas-themed screening on Tuesday, which this short will be part of. It would be nice to get the facts straight as well. :)

[trondmm]

Yeah, I think this is just an urban legend myself. First of all, I doubt that a cartoon is even eligable for nomination. The nomination could have been for Harman, or even the studio, but probably not the cartoon.

Second, nominations must be in by February 1st, and this cartoon was released on December 9th 1939. So I find it highly unlikely that it was nominated for the 1939 peace prize. According to the database, there were no nominations at all for the years 1940-1944, so I assume the Nobel Committee didn't even send nomination invitations to the qualified nominators those years.

I've looked through all nominations for the years 1939-1955, and I haven't found any nomination that references this cartoon at all.

My guess is that if this cartoon has received any sort of nomination, it has been an unofficial one. It's possible that someone who's not qualified to nominate anyone for the peace prize, wrote to the Nobel Committee and asked them to consider the cartoon for the prize. It certainly doesn't seem to have received an official nomination.

(unless it was nominated later than 1955, in which case we'll have to wait for the database to be updated. Nominations are secret for 50 years, so we're only missing the years 1956-1958 at the moment)

[trondmm]

One more thing: I could pop by the Nobel Peace Center and try to confirm if no nominations were made during the war, or if all wartime nominations are listed for the 1945 award. I can also check if anyone's heard about the cartoon at all, and if they know anything about this nomination story.

[trondmm]

OK, it turns out that there's this invention called "the telephone", and I actually have one on my desk. So, I called the Norwegian Nobel Institute.

First of all: A cartoon cannot be nominated. Only persons and organizations are eligable. If "Peace on Earth" was nominated in any way, the nomination would have had to be for Harman, Quimby or MGM.

He also confirmed that invitations for nominations were not issued during the war years. A prize was awarded for 1944, but this was actually done in 1945.

One more thing that you should consider. The nominations are kept secret for 50 years. Harman died in 1982, and the nomination was mentioned in his obituary. At this time, the only person knowing about the nomination, would be the person that nominated him. I haven't been able to find a source saying that Harman was nominated by X, or that X claims to have nominated Harman.

[trondmm]

Sorry if this is turning into a monologue, but I thought I'd just mention that I just found a reference to this nomination in an interview Michael Barrier did with Bob Clampett in June 1969.

http://www.michaelbarrier.com/Funnyworld/Clampett/interview_bob_clampett.htm

In 1940, Rudy made The Milky Way, which won the Oscar. They had seven Oscar nominations. And Hugh made the antiwar Peace on Earth, which was nominated for an Oscar and the Nobel Peace Prize.

So this rumor is at least 40 years old. I'm getting really curious about where and how it originated now.

[Brandon Panther]

Clampett was known for exagerating some things, as others were too...

[Fredrik]

Thanks for your efforts, trondmm! It's all very interesting, and mystery still not solved...

[Leviathan]

But.. why would Clampett embellish like that for someone else's cartoon? Especially since he couldn't't connect its success to himself.

[Fibber Fox]

Clampett was known for exagerating some things, as others were too...

So, was Clampett the source of the rumour? I haven't read any of Harman's interviews so I don't know if he made reference to a Nobel.

I think it's pretty clear the "nomination" never happened.

Bob could simply have been mistaken. For all I know, maybe there was talk after the film came out that it should be nominated for one, and that kind of morphed in fading memories over the years to the nomination actually happening.

F. Fox

[Fibber Fox]

But.. why would Clampett embellish like that for someone else's cartoon? Especially since he couldn't't connect its success to himself.

Didn't you know? Bob invented the Nobel Prize. Right before he came up with Sniffles. ;)

F. Fox

[millsie]

It is entirely feasible that Harman was nominated for one though, as they just need only one person has to nominate. In 1939 someone from Sweden nominated Hitler.

In the commentary for Peace On Earth on the Academy Award Nominees DVD, it is stated that the 1940 awards were cancelled due to the war after the nominations were made. So Peace On Earth did not win or lose the award, but who knows how true this really is?

[trondmm]

It is entirely feasible that Harman was nominated for one though, as they just need only one person has to nominate.

Not just any person, though.

http://nobelprize.org/nomination/peace/nominators.html



Members of national assemblies and governments of states
Members of international courts
University rectors; professors of social sciences, history, philosophy, law and theology; directors of peace research institutes and foreign policy institutes
Persons who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
Board members of organizations who have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
Active and former members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee; (proposals by members of the Committee to be submitted no later than at the first meeting of the Committee after February 1)
Former advisers appointed by the Norwegian Nobel Institute




In 1939 someone from Sweden nominated Hitler.
He was nominated by Swedish Parlament member Erik Brandt. He also tried to withdraw the nomination on Feb. 1st 1939, however the committee does not accept withdrawals of nominations.

In the commentary for Peace On Earth on the Academy Award Nominees DVD, it is stated that the 1940 awards were cancelled due to the war after the nominations were made.

I just find it so strange that the nomination database doesn't contain a single entry for 1940. The 1939 prize was also cancelled, but the database contains 59 nominations for this year. This is why I suspect that the Nobel Committee didn't even send out invitation letters for nominations to the 1940 award.

Nomination invitations are sent in September, and all nominations must be poststamped no later then February 1st. Germany invaded Norway on April 9th 1940, and most members of the Nobel Committee fled to the UK this day. But this is two months after the nomination deadline, so if they did accept nominations that year, there would have been enough time to at the very least register all the nominees.

So Peace On Earth did not win or lose the award, but who knows how true this really is?

My guess is that someone either intended to nominate Harman, and made this public, but ended up not mailing the nomination when he discovered that the awards were cancelled that year. Or, that someone actually did send in a nomination, but that the nomination wasn't registered either because the person wasn't qualified to nominate anyone, or because the price was cancelled that year anyway (or both).

BTW: I want to clarify that I'm not trying to claim that anyone's been lying about this. I'm just becoming increasingly more certain that the Nobel Committee does not acknowledge Harman as a nominee. This simply makes me very curious about how the story got started.

[trondmm]

In 1939 someone from Sweden nominated HitlerHe was nominated by Swedish Parlament member Erik Brandt. He also tried to withdraw the nomination on Feb. 1st 1939, however the committee does not accept withdrawals of nominations.

I should probably also mention that Brandt was being sarcastic when he nominated Hitler. He did so as a protest to the nomination of Neville Chamberlain for the Munich agreement.

[That 70s Mom]

FWIW, the VHS tape MGM Cartoon Magic says that Peace on Earth was "cited by the Nobel Peace Prize jury". That could mean anything - someone on the jury saying "Hey, I heard the Americans made a cartoon about peace!" - and it could have happened in any year since 1939.

[trondmm]

FWIW, the VHS tape MGM Cartoon Magic says that Peace on Earth was "cited by the Nobel Peace Prize jury". That could mean anything - someone on the jury saying "Hey, I heard the Americans made a cartoon about peace!"

Yeah, it's a bit vague. I'm also not sure if it's realistic to expect the acting jury to have seen the short during the war. Maybe some of the historians here knows anything about the international distribution of "Peace on Earth" during the war?

However, two of the committee members who fled at the outbreak of the war (C. J. Hambro and Halvdan Koht), spend their time in exile in USA. Hambro arrived in USA in June 1940, I'm not sure about Koht. They could possibly have seen the cartoon and commented on it.

and it could have happened in any year since 1939.

It could. But apparently it was common knowledge, even during the war, that Peace on Earth had received a Peace Prize nomination.