Oliver!

The last of the musicals to win Best Picture in the 60's. Also the worst. The songs are bad and the singing is just awful. It was almost painful to listen too.

The movie is a musical version of Dickens's Oliver Twist. About an orphan boy who runs away to London and falls in with a gang of thieves. I don't know how well the movie follows the book since I haven't read the book since High School but besides for the singing I think it is a faithful adaption.

Obviously the big problem with the movie is the song and singing. I don't remember not liking the book when I originally read it so it can't be the story. It just baffles me that they could turn a classic book into a bad musical. Also, what I don't understand is if you are going to dub Oliver's singing with a girl why would you pick a girl who can't sing? She is the worst singer in the movie. I dreaded every time Oliver had to sing. Really the only good thing about this movie is the choreography and Onna White won an Honorary Award for it.

I was reading something that in 1968 the two movies that were favored to win were The Lion in Winter and Funny Girl. The theory is that they split the votes and Oliver! ended up winning. I have never seen Funny Girl but I thought The Lion in Winter was a great movie and should have won.

Oscar trivia from 1968
The first time that there was a ties for Best Actress. Barbara Streisand for Funny Girl and Katherine Hepburn for The Lion in Winter each got the exact same number of votes.
Also Hepburn became the 3 actor or actress to win two years in a row after winning the year before for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. 
Oliver! was the first movie to win Best Picture after the MPAA set up its rating system of G, PG, R, and X. Making this the first movie to have a rating when it won and the only G rated movie to ever win Best Picture.
War and Peace became the longest movie to ever win an Academy Award. It won for Best Foreign Film and was nearly 7 hours long.