Best Film Promoting International Understanding

That was the only award this movie won in its day, from the Golden Globe people, who further demonstrated their artistic good taste by also giving the movie its only film nomination, for the eerie oft-copied magnetic score (sounding literally like a resonating high power magnet), suggesting the Academy must have been deaf in 1951.

Perhaps we need to appreciate the intense feelings and fear and hatred and threatening militancy that fueled and informed the cold war proliferation of nuclear weapons ('arms race' is the term used to make it vague) when this movie was made in 1951, one year before we turned to Gen. Eisenhower in our hour of Hydrogen Bomb anxiety, in order to be amazed at how timely and topical was its anti-nuclear political message, made not only as its obvious theme (even a child could spot it and that's great here), but as a dramatic speech to close the curtain.

For me, its not science fiction, no more than it would be if, instead of an alien and a robot and a spaceship on an anti-nuke mission to Washington DC, it were anti-nuke people pretending to be an alien and a robot and to have a pretend spaceship in DC... that is, by the way, what it is.

Nominated by me as one of the finalists in the category of "20th Century's Most Timely and Topical Hollywood Movies on a Political Topic that actually addresses something politically important to people outside of Hollywood."

Also, I nominate the Golden Globes as Best Awards, for 1951 at least. I'd give them a Golden Globe as the award, but first I'd have to steal one from someone, and that seems completely against the spirit of Robert Wise.