The Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award is awarded periodically at the Academy Awards ceremonies to "Creative producers, whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production." The award is named for Irving Thalberg, legendary head of the Production Division of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who developed the company's reputation for sophisticated films. The trophy for award recipients is in the form of a bust of Thalberg rather than the familiar "Oscar" statuette. However, it is still counted as an "honorary Oscar". There have been 39 statuettes awarded to date.
- 10th – Darryl F. Zanuck
- 11th – Hal B. Wallis
- Other nominees in 1939 (the only year for which non-winning nominations were announced):
- Samuel Goldwyn
- Joe Pasternak
- David O. Selznick
- Hunt Stromberg
- Walter Wanger
- Darryl F. Zanuck
- 12th – David O. Selznick
- 14th – Walt Disney
- 15th – Sidney Franklin
- 16th – Hal B. Wallis
- 17th – Darryl F. Zanuck
- 19th – Samuel Goldwyn
- 21st – Jerry Wald
- 23rd – Darryl F. Zanuck
- 24th – Arthur Freed
- 25th – Cecil B. DeMille
- 26th – George Stevens
- 29th – Buddy Adler
- 31st – Jack L. Warner
- 34th – Stanley Kramer
- 36th – Sam Spiegel
- 38th – William Wyler
- 39th – Robert Wise
- 40th – Alfred Hitchcock
- 43rd – Ingmar Bergman
- 46th – Lawrence Weingarten
- 48th – Mervyn LeRoy
- 49th – Pandro S. Berman
- 50th – Walter Mirisch
- 52nd – Ray Stark
- 54th – Albert R. Broccoli
- 59th – Steven Spielberg
- 60th – Billy Wilder
- 63rd – David Brown and Richard D. Zanuck
- 64th – George Lucas
- 67th – Clint Eastwood
- 69th – Saul Zaentz
- 71st – Norman Jewison
- 72nd – Warren Beatty
- 73rd – Dino De Laurentiis
- 82nd – John Calley
- 83rd – Francis Ford Coppola
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