I've always wondered about In the Heat of the Night winning best picture for 1967. The award show was canceled and moved back a couple of days because Martin Luther King's assassination occurred on the day the show was originally scheduled. So, they have the show two days later, and the best picture turns out to be the race-relations themed movie In the Heat of the Night? I think it's a pretty good movie, but it just doesn't strike me as "best picture" material. I wonder if the Academy did some sort of do-over for best picture to "make a statement" in the wake of MLK's murder?
I think they do a ballot amongst the membership, but you couldn’t verify that by me. I’m not sure what they did in those days. I wouldn’t put it past them, slipping something like this in.