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On May 16, 1929, 270 people assembled in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel's Blossom Room. They were there to honor the highest achievements in filmmaking over the previous year. It was not broadcast on radio, was not recorded, and the entire event only took 15 minutes. Those present on that day didn't know it, but they were witness to the start of the most prestigious awards in the motion picture industry.
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The Academy Awards, more commonly known as the Oscars, is one of the biggest televised events every year. It commands a worldwide audience and regularly racks up some of the highest TV ratings of the season. For almost 100 years, the Oscars have been one of the most prestigious and certainly best-known awards in the motion picture industry. The Academy Awards story begins in the 1920s, when the motion picture industry was just starting to explode in Hollywood.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded in 1927 as a professional organization for the film industry. The idea for the Academy came from Louis B. Mayer, the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, or MGM, one of the most powerful film studios at the time. Hollywood was experiencing growing tensions between studios and labor unions representing actors, writers, and technicians. Mayer wanted to create an organization that could mediate disputes and prevent the rise of unions.
The original intention of the Academy had nothing to do with awards or the art and science of film. It was just a way to prevent unions from taking over the industry. And I should add, it was a goal that failed miserably considering that today, the film industry is one of the most heavily unionized there is. On January 11, 1927, Mayer invited 36 influential figures from Hollywood's film industry to a banquet at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
At this gathering, he proposed the formation of an organization that would unite various branches of the film industry, actors, directors, producers, writers, and technicians, under one professional association. The response was positive, and the group agreed to establish the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
They elected Douglas Fairbank Sr., a popular silent film star, as the Academy's first president, and Fred Niblo as vice president. The first official meeting was held on May 11, 1927, with 36 charter members. The idea for an award ceremony came from Academy director Cedric Gibbons during early Academy board meetings. The initial idea was for a generic "award of merit," but the board eventually created awards for 15 categories.
Douglas Fairbanks announced the awards plan at a banquet in 1928, establishing what would become the most coveted prize in filmmaking. The first Academy Awards ceremony took place on May 16, 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel's Blossom Room. Unlike today's elaborate production, it was just a private dinner for approximately 270 attendees. The ceremony just lasted 15 minutes, and the winners had been announced three months earlier. Tickets cost $5.00.
Emil Jannings won the award for Best Actor for two films that he appeared in, The Way of All Flesh and The Last Command. Because he was going to be in Europe and would miss the ceremony, he was given the award early and hence has the distinction of being the first person to win an Academy Award. Janet Gaynor won for Best Actress for Seventh Heaven, Street Angel, and Sunrise, A Song of Two Humans.
These early awards were given to the best actor or actress for their performance across multiple films, not just a performance for a single film as they are today. There was no best pitcher award per se. Instead, two awards were given for films, Outstanding Pitcher and Best Unique Artistic Pitcher. The winners were Wings and Sunrise, A Song of Two Humans. Likewise, there were two directing awards, one for comedy and one for drama.
The physical award given out was, and still is, called the Academy Award of Merit. Cedric Gibbons, the head of MGM's art department and one of Hollywood's most influential production designers, was tasked with designing the statuette. Gibbons' initial concept was a knight holding a sword standing on a reel of film. Sculptor George Stanley was commissioned to bring the design to life in three dimensions. The final design featured a knight standing on a film reel, gripping a crusader sword.
The first Oscar statuette was cast in solid bronze, coated with 24-karat gold. The origin of the name Oscar is debated, with several theories. The first is that Betty Davis, a two-time Oscar winner, claimed that she named the statuette after her first husband, Harmon Oscar Nelson. And the second story is that Margaret Herrick, the Academy's librarian and later the Academy's executive director, reportedly said the statuette looked like her uncle, Oscar Pearce.
In 1934, Hollywood columnist Sidney Slosky used the term Oscar in an article which helped popularize it. And by 1939, the Academy officially adopted the name Oscar. During World War II, due to metal shortages, Oscars were made of painted plaster. After the war, winners were invited to exchange their plaster trophies for real metallic ones. After the war, the Academy switched to a Britannia metal core, which is a pewter-like alloy of tin, copper, and antimony with gold plating.
In 2016, the Academy returned to using solid bronze with 24-karat gold plating, closely resembling the original 1929 design. Fun fact, the man in the statue is technically neither bald nor naked. He is wearing a very small loincloth and has a very short haircut. Since 1950, Oscar winners and their heirs cannot sell or transfer their statuettes without first offering them back to the Academy for $1.00.
This rule ensures that Oscars remain prestigious awards rather than commercial collectibles. If an Oscar winner refuses the Academy's rule, then they cannot receive the award. Michael Jackson bought David O. Selznick's Oscar from Gone with the Wind for $1.5 million in 1999. This Oscar wasn't subject to the rules because it was awarded before 1950. Winners can donate their Oscars to a museum, but they cannot legally sell them.
Given the glamour surrounding Hollywood, the low-key nature of the first awards pretty much ended with it. With the second award show in 1930, they were broadcast on radio. And in 1953, they were broadcast for the first time on television. In 1930, the Academy also began using sealed envelopes to maintain secrecy until the ceremony, after the Los Angeles Times leaked the winners beforehand. The Oscars were mostly an industry event until 1939 when Gone with the Wind won Best Pitcher.
This was the most popular film of all time, and it added a level of prestige to the film and brought the awards to the attention of the general public. Over the years, the categories for which awards were given out have ebbed and flowed. For example, Best Cinematography was initially one category, and then split into two for Color in Black and White, and then back into one. Best Supporting Actor and Actress categories were added in 1936.
In 1940, the Best Visual Effects category, originally called the Best Special Effects category, was introduced. The Best Foreign Language Film category was officially introduced in 1956, and it was renamed Best International Feature Film in 2020. What most people don't realize about this category is that the award doesn't actually go to a person, but a country. However, in 2014, they changed the rules such that the director's name is etched on the statue, and the director gets to keep the physical award.
Though animated shorts have been awarded since 1932, it wasn't until 2002 that Best Animated Feature category was introduced. This change was largely influenced by the rise of high-quality animated films in the 1990s, such as Disney's Beauty and the Beast and Pixar's Toy Story, which proved that animation was a serious art form worthy of competitive recognition.
One of the most controversial changes in Oscar history came in 2009, when the Best Picture category was expanded from five nominees to a maximum of ten. This change was a response to criticism over the exclusion of widely popular films like The Dark Knight in 2008. The intent was to allow greater diversity in film representation, ensuring that both blockbuster and independent films had a better chance of being nominated.
Traditionally, when awards were presented, the presenter would say, and the winner is, but in 1989, the Academy changed it so that the presenters instead said, and the Oscar goes to. Say for three years from 2019 to 2021, when the Academy was experimenting, every ceremony has had a host. The record for hosting or co-hosting the most times is Bob Hope, who has hosted the ceremony 19 times.
Runner-up is Billy Crystal, who has hosted the awards nine times. What many people don't realize, until they mention it very briefly every year during the ceremony, is that there is another non-televised set of Academy Awards that are given out every year. The Scientific and Technical Awards have a separate ceremony each year, which is usually held about a week before the main ceremony. These awards are highly technical, and there aren't categories like there are in the main ceremony.
These awards are given out for things like the development of technologies like IMAX or Dolby Atmos. Voting for the Academy Awards is conducted by the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. As of the recording of this episode, there are over 10,000 members worldwide. Each member belongs to one or more of 17 branches, each representing different filmmaking disciplines, including acting, directing, producing, writing, and cinematography.
There are two main rounds of voting. The first round is the nomination round. Academy members can only vote in their own branch in this round. In other words, directors can nominate directors, actors can nominate actors, etc. Best Pitcher is the only category where all members can vote. A ranked choice ballot is used for Best Pitcher, while every other category uses a simple plurality system. Once the nominations have been tallied, it goes to the second and final round.
In the second round, all Academy members can vote in every category. Each category uses a simple plurality vote. In other words, whoever gets the most votes wins. The exception is Best Pitcher, which again is determined using a ranked choice ballot. Since 1934, the accounting firm of Price Waterhouse Coopers has been responsible for counting and verifying votes, maintaining absolute secrecy, delivering sealed results to the Oscars ceremony.
Votes are collected electronically, but then manually checked. A small PricewaterhouseCoopers team of usually just two people are responsible for counting the ballots. Each category's winner is sealed in an envelope, which is only opened on stage and is unknown to anyone other than the PricewaterhouseCoopers team. No electronic records of winners exist, only physical ballots and handwritten tallies. The final results are memorized by the PricewaterhouseCoopers team to prevent leaks.
Two identical briefcases carry the winner's envelopes via separate routes to the ceremony. Despite all the precautions, mistakes can still happen. The most famous of these was when the 2017 Best Picture winner was announced. La La Land was mistakenly announced the winner instead of Moonlight. The reason for the screw-up was because of the duplicate envelopes. For some reason, the duplicate envelope for Best Actress was given to the presenters for Best Picture.
Emma Stone was the winner in the Best Actress category for La La Land. The way the card was printed, the name of the film was in large print and the name of the actress was in small print. When Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway opened the envelope, they were confused, but saw in large print the words La La Land. The PricewaterhouseCoopers team backstage, who had memorized the results, immediately realized that there was a mix-up and corrected the problem and recognized the winner, Moonlight.
It was embarrassing, but the correct award was given out. Even though, in my humble opinion, La La Land was the better film. The big question with the Academy Awards is how well do they do when it comes to actually selecting the films that are the best? It's actually a pretty mixed bag. In my film collection, I have every film that has won Best Picture going back to 1929. And I'd say that most of them, with the benefit of hindsight, were not actually the best films produced in the year that they won.
Citizen Kane, Saving Private Ryan, Vertigo, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, and a host of other films which have stood the test of time have never won the Oscar for Best Picture. However, sometimes they did get it right. That isn't to say the Best Picture winners are bad films, but they are often subject to industry pressure, voting campaigns, and other factors that have nothing to do with the film itself. It's best to just realize that the Academy Awards are what they are.
They're awards given out by the industry to itself, not by film critics or the public. It's a night where the motion picture industry can get dressed up and get a lot of attention for themselves, even if the awards that they give out aren't perfect. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Okun and Cameron Kiefer.
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