Okay, in honor of Oscars, I am going to share a couple of "lost" chapters of my book The Secret of Success is Not a Secret. These got cut because my manuscript was way too long ( about 98,000 words when I submitted it) and the editor needed to cut it down so it would fit on 366 pages. Therefore, it was decided to focus only on individual stories and cut compilations. So, they got cut. But they make great trivia:

The Most Honors for Being Nominated

Sammy Cahn wrote his first hit song, “Rhythm Is Our Business,” in 1935. It was followed by three more in 1936. In 1940, he moved to Hollywood where he wrote songs for Warner Brothers, Republic Studios, and Columbia Pictures. However, it was not until 1943 that one of Cahn’s songs, “It seems I’ve heard that Song Before,” was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song. It did not win the Oscar. In 1944, his song “Follow the Boys” was nominated and lost. In 1946, he received two nominations for Best Song but they both lost. In all, Cahn was nominated ten times before he finally won the Oscar for Best Song in 1954. During his lifetime, Cahn received thirty nominations—more times than any other songwriter—and won four Oscars. The Songwriters’ Hall of Fame not only inducted Cahn but also named their Lifetime Achievement Award after him.

Although he does not have as many total nominations as Cahn, Victor Young has the dubious honor of receiving the most nominations before finally winning his first Oscar. Young was nominated twenty-one times for Scoring and Songwriting before he finally won in January 1957. Unfortunately, the award was awarded posthumously—Young died on November 10, 1956.

Academy Award Losers

Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Altman have the dubious honor of having been nominated five times for an Academy Award for Best Director without winning. Scorsese broke away from the other two, however, in 2007 when he won the coveted award for best director his sixth time around. Stanley Kubrick and Federico Fellini were nominated four times and Ingmar Bergman was been nominated three times without winning. George Lucas has been nominated for Best Director twice and never won. Nevertheless, they are still considered some of the greatest directors and several of them have been given the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement. Both The Turning Point and The Color Purple were nominated for eleven Oscars and yet failed to win in any category. Likewise, Gangs of New York received ten nominations without a win.Richard Burton has seven Academy Award nominations and Peter O’Toole has received eight, but each time they walked away without an Oscar. Likewise, Deborah Kerr and Thelma Ritter received six nominations for their performances and never won an Oscar. Kevin O’Connell has been nominated nineteen times without a win as of 2007 for mixing sound in such movies as Top Gun, A Few Good Men, Terms of Endearment, and most recently, Apocalypto.

Anyone care to share their own obscure Oscar trivia? Tip goes to the most interesting Oscar trivia.

Oh, and if you like these stories, buy the book from Barnes & Noble ( http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?z=y&EAN=9781569069974&itm=1 ), Amazon ( http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Success-Not-Stories-Persevered/dp/1569069972/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198202877&sr=8-1 ) or any other bookstore!