The time a goat was nominated for an Oscar

It was February 1934. The night the Oscar nominations were announced.

Jack Warner listened intently to the voice on the phone before swearing loudly and hurling his ashtray at the wall where it shattered in an explosion of cigar ash.

His secretary came rushing in.

Jack starred at her. Eyes like thunder.

“Have Jeffrey the Amazing Goat killed,” he growled.

In 1932, Jeffrey the Amazing Goat was just Jeffrey the Goat. He spent his time in a field chewing grass and occasionally bleating.

One day producer David O. Selznick was out hiking and he came across Jeffrey the Goat. He knew immediately that Jeffrey was going to be a star.

“You could just tell the moment you saw Jeffery that he had something,” said Selznick in a 1947 Wogan interview.

“It was a charisma, a personality. Something, I don’t know, he just had something no other goat I’d ever seen had.”

Selznick signed Jeffrey up immediately. He had an idea for a goat based picture that, if successful, could spawn a series.

Jack Warner was aware of Jeffrey the Amazing Goat but he wasn’t concerned, he had the biggest stars of the day at Warner Brothers, Bette Davis, Errol Flynn and, of course, Jimmy Cagney. Surely a goat was no match for such star power.

“Hell, I think I was as shocked as Jack,” laughed Selznick.

“But goddamn it if Americans didn’t just love that damn goat.”

The Jolly Goat films were the most successful pictures of 1932 and 1933, but the real surprise came in February of 1934.

“The Jolly Goat Goes To The Park,” recalled Selznick.

“Jeffrey the Amazing Goat really took acting to a new emotional level. It was a damn masterclass. But I don’t think anyone saw the Oscar nomination coming.”

So it was that on March 16^th Warner Brothers’ Paul Muni went up against Jeffery The Amazing Goat for the best actor Oscar.

Jack Warner didn’t have Jeffery killed, and in the event. It was Charles Laughton’s towering performance in the Private Life of Henry VIII that triumphed.

Ultimately the Warner Brothers gangster pictures grew in popularity at the expense of the Jolly Goat films, and Jeffrey the Amazing Goat went back to being plain old Jeffrey the Goat and retired back to his field to chew grass and bleat until the end of his days in 1962

Although he was never nominated for another acting award, Jeffrey was award a special Oscar in 1959 for services to goats and the film industry, and remains the only goat ever to have been so honoured.