Wings, Grand Hotel, and (more recently) Driving Miss Daisy.

Wings is acknowledged as the first Best Picture recipient (although
there was a second award for "Artistic Quality of Production"
- sometimes referred to as "Unique and Artistic Production" -
which had virtually identical criteria, awarded to Sunrise, which also
failed to be nominated for Best Director) and was the pet
project of William A. Wellman, who was a flier in WWI and did
some of the stunt piloting in the film. Wellman was overlooked in the
nominations in favor of winner Frank Borzage for Seventh Heaven,
King Vidor for The Crowd and the surprising selection of Herbert Brenon
for the potboiler Sorrell and Son (who should have been ignored in
favor of Wellman, F.W. Murnau for Sunrise or Josef von Sternberg for
The Last Command), as well as nominees for Comedy Direction for Lewis
Milestone, Ted Wilde and Charles Chaplin (whose name was removed from
the final balloting when he was presented a Special Award instead).
Wellman did receive three Best Director nominations later in his career
and won the award for Original Screenplay for the 1937 version of A Star is Born.

Grand Hotel is the only film to win the Best Picture Oscar without
any other nominations, which is surprising because it features some
brilliant acting (especially by Joan Crawford in the finest performance
of her career) and a magnificent art deco set design. But its greatest
achievement may have been the direction of Edmund Goulding, who did
a miraculous job of reigning in the All Star egos of his All Star cast.
Goulding was bypassed in the nominations by winner Frank Borzage for
Bad Girl (a ridiculous choice that was credited to Borzage's social
connections within the industry), Josef von Sternberg for Shanghai
Express, and King Vidor for The Champ. Goulding never received
an Oscar nomination in his workmanlike career at MGM, despite
directing Best Picture nominees Dark Victory and The Razor's Edge.

Producer David Brown complained bitterly in his Oscar acceptance
speech about Bruce Beresford's snub as a Best Director nominee for
Driving Miss Daisy, and deservedly so. Unlike his predecessors named
above, Beresford had a one-in-five chance of being nominated and saw
Woody Allen for Crimes and Misdemeanors, Kenneth Branagh for
Henry V, Jim Sheridan for My Left Foot, Peter Weir for Dead Poet's
Society and winner Oliver Stone for Born on the Fourth of July
selected over him. But Beresford's Oscar miss wasn't exactly a brush-off,
since Driving Miss Daisy was named Best Picture by the Golden
Globes and the National Board of Review as well as the Academy,
but Beresford didn't receive so much as a nomination from any
other major awards organization for his direction. Beresford was nominated for
Oscars for Best Director for Tender Mercies (1982) and Screenplay Based
on Material from Another Medium for "Breaker" Morant (1979).

The only films to win Best Picture without a writing nomination are:
Wings (1927/28)*
The Broadway Melody (1928/29)
Grand Hotel (1931/32)
Calvacade (1932/33)
Hamlet (1948)
The Sound of Music (1965)
Titanic (1997)

* Sunrise was also overlooked in the writing nominations

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