Which 1945 Best Picture winner centers on alcoholic writer Don Birnam?

The 1945 Best Picture winner centered on alcoholic writer Don Birnam is The Lost Weekend.

Billy Wilder directed and co-wrote this stark drama with Charles Brackett, adapting Charles R. Jackson’s 1944 novel. Ray Milland plays Don Birnam, a New York writer whose alcoholism controls his life and threatens his relationships, his work, and his ability to remain sober through a weekend alone.

The film won four Oscars at the 18th Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director for Wilder, Best Actor for Milland, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Its expressionistic imagery and unsentimental depiction of addiction were unusually direct for mainstream Hollywood in the 1940s.

A common mix-up is Days of Wine and Roses, another well-known alcoholism drama, but that film was released in 1962 and was not a Best Picture winner. Mildred Pierce and The Snake Pit were also 1945 films, yet neither centers on Don Birnam. The Lost Weekend was selected for the National Film Registry in 2011.