20 of the worst Oscar winners in history

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Tom Huddleston sorts the least deserving Academy Award winners

It’s Oscar season once again – and while Academy members scratch their heads trying to decide which of this year’s crop of worthy titles deserves to take home the big prize, we trawl the archives to uncover the worst Oscar offences of all time. From the film that beat ‘Citizen Kane’ to Best Picture to the time ‘Harry and the Hendersons’ walked away with a handful of gold, here are all the Academy’s biggest blunders in one handy list.

This is by no means a definitive rundown of all of Oscar’s shoddy decisions – we didn’t even have room to mention Celine Dion or ’Chicago’ – so if you really, really hate ‘Titanic’ or really, really love ‘Forrest Gump’, tell us about it in the comments box below.

3. ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ (1952)

Best Picture, 25th Academy Awards, 1953

Legendary producer-director Cecil B DeMille may be one of the key figures in the history of American cinema, but that doesn’t mean his films were all great. Gaudy circus story ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ may have packed them in at the box office, but you’d be hard-pressed to mount a strong artistic defence of this trashy, overlong epic.

It could’ve been: ‘The Bad and the Beautiful’ (not nominated),‘High Noon’.

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