Bye Bye Birdie, the popular musical starring Ann-Margret, received two Oscar nominations:  Sound for Charles Rice
and Scoring of Music (Adaptation or Treatment) for John Green.

“To Catch a Thief” was nominated for three Oscars, Cinematography (color) by Robert Burks, who won;

Art Direction-Set Decoration (color) by Hal Pereira and Joseph McMillan Johnson; Sam Comer and Arthur Krams; and Costume Design (color) by Edith Head.

Feb 23, 2009–The 2009 Oscar Awards show, on Feb 22, 2009, was watched by a large audience, especially in the biggest markets. One year after the Oscar telecast declined to its smallest audience on record (32 million), audience was up by 13% to 36.3 million, according to preliminary Nielsen estimates. Audience peaked during the 10 p.m. ET half-hour, which included Heath Ledger's posthumous victory.

Feb 23, 2009–Exactly 13 months after his death from an accidental overdose, Heath Ledger won the supporting actor Oscar for his performance as the anarchic Joker in Chris Nolans' box-office hit “The Dark Knight.” “Menacing, mercurial, droll, diabolical,” was how Supporting Actor winner Kevin Kline described the performance in making the pre-award speech for Ledger as a past winner in the category. “Heath Ledger has left us an original and enduring legacy.”

Danny Boyle, who won Best Director for “Slumdog Millionaire,” said in his acceptance sopeech: My kids are too old to remember this now, but when they were much younger, I swore to them that if this miracle ever happened that I would receive it in the spirit of Tigger from “Winnie-the-Pooh” and that's what that was. You've been so generous to us this evening and I wanted to thank you for that and also for an extraordinary, what a beautiful show you've done. I don't know what it looks like on television, everybody, but in the room, it's bloody wonderful, really. So, well done, everyone.