This Actor’s Multiple Wins Forced the Academy To Change Its Rules

Here's one of the strangest Academy Awards facts you'll ever come across: In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Walter Brennan won three Oscars for acting within five years. That's the kind of rapid fire success that would make Meryl Streep envious, and it's success that has the fumes of something fishy coming off of it. How could somebody win so many awards so quickly? Given that this was a time when only few notable actors, including Luise Rainer, Bette Davis, and Spencer Tracy, had won more than one Oscar for their entire career, it makes no sense. Surely there was some level of chicanery or machination behind the scenes to give a glorified character actor like Brennan this level of luster? Well, sort of … kind of … but it depends on your definition of the word "rigged."