The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, in 1963, was an organization with approximately 2,800 eligible voters—a figure derived from a 1965 press account and cited in the advocacy scholarship. These members voted within their professional branches for nominations and across the full membership for final awards. The voting was conducted by mail, the process was confidential, and the results were not announced until the envelopes were opened at the ceremony.
What this means is that Davis’s allegation—that Crawford had contacted Academy members and urged them to vote against her—rests on a behavioral claim (that Crawford made such contacts) that would have been very difficult to document without the recipients of those contacts going public. If such contacts were made and some recipients did not vote for Davis, those recipients had no obligation to say so. If no such contacts were made, there was also nothing to document.
The Academy has not, in the period since 1963, released any records suggesting an investigation into improper campaigning in the Best Actress category at the 35th ceremony. No Academy member has gone on public record saying Crawford contacted them. The claim originated with Davis and has been attributed to Davis in every account that contains it.
None of this means the allegation is false. It means the allegation is unverified. Those are not the same thing.
What the voting record does show is that Anne Bancroft won—presumably because enough Academy members found her performance in *The Miracle Worker* more compelling than the performances of the other four nominees. Whether any of those votes were moved by Crawford’s alleged campaign, by the specific prestige associations of Bancroft’s theatrical background, by the Academy’s preference for certain kinds of emotional earnestness over certain kinds of camp, or by any other factor—none of this can be extracted from an anonymous aggregate vote.