Los Oscars were created by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS, for its acronym in English), in 1928. A year earlier, “The Academy” as it is commonly called, had seen the light, thanks to the agreement of 36 major producers of the “majors” of the Hollywood film industry .
Above all of them, the brain of the powerful, conceited and unbeatable Louis B. Mayer, president of Metro-Goldywn-Mayer. At that time, the main task of the creation of the Academy was to iron out differences between the studies and the union claims.
However, shortly after seeing the light, the priests of the studios thought that inventing a self-award would be a good press campaign for the illusion-making machine.
The idea was favorably received by all the sectors involved and immediately, the delivery of the Oscar Awards it became a “merit award”.
Oscars Awards: Stories
The first ceremony of deliveries took place on May 16, 1929 at the restaurant of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. There were 270 people to deliver only 15 statuettes, of which only 4 are worth remembering: Best film (Wings, 1927); Best Director (Frank Borzage, drama, and Lewis Milestone, comedy); Best Actor (Emil Janningsby The Last Command); and Best Actress (Janet Gaynor, The seventh heaven).
Unlike what is currently the case, the Oscar Awards they were delivered while lunch was taking place and, to attend, the guests had to pay US$ 5 per cover. Action hero Douglas Faribanks and screenwriter William C. de Mille were the entertainers during a ceremony that only lasted 15 minutes. (one minute per award). Then there was a party at the Mayfair Hotel.
That first installment distinguished the productions of 1927 and 1928, so that all the producing labels could participate.
Another of the curiosities that the inaugural Oscar had was that, despite the fact that it had a clear, understandable and strong local stamp, the first actor to receive a statuette was a German. Indeed, Emil Jannings He was chosen for his performance in The Last Command and also in The way of all fleshbut he had to return to his country before May 16 and then, they gave it to him before, to him alone.
From the fourth edition of Oscar Awards, each distinction became as it is currently, for a singular work in a certain film and not for all those made by each nominee in the evaluated period.
Stories on the red carpet
And the truth is that the idea of Louis B. Mayer and its partners caught on among Americans and throughout the world, since today there are almost a hundred countries that see the delivery of Oscars live.
In 1947, two decades after the creation of the Hollywood Academy, the Broadway priests created the Tony Awards, with the same purpose that inspired the Los Angeles majors.
Two years later, and without any fear of being criticized for their lack of originality, television in the United States launched the Premios Emmy. And late, but sure, in 1959 the record companies started with the Premios Grammy.
Oscars curiosities
The awards accompanied the technological evolution of the film industry, the industry without chimneys. During the first edition of 1929, all the nominated films were silent; a year later the talkies had arrived and, therefore, the musical He was the big star of that year and of the following Oscar Awards.
broadway tunes (1929, Harry Beaumont) marked a before and after in the history of the seventh art.
it’s almost 6.000 los members current academy 3.000 los actors and around 2000 los professionals from various film categories that received the statuette.
With voices for or against, the truth is that three films were the ones that accumulated the most awards in the history of the Academy: Ben How (1959), Titanic (1997) y The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), who won nothing more and nothing less than 11 statuettes each of them.
Oscar Awards: history and curiosities
The statuette that is delivered at each ceremony of Oscar Awards It began to be called precisely that, officially, in 1939, when the Hollywood Academy had already been giving out awards for a decade.
Why the statuette and the ceremony as a whole came to be called that is a long story, which can be read in detail on the web profile: “This is the story of the Oscar statuette”
At the first Oscars, the Academy had the bad idea of announcing the winners… three months before! So by the time the prize reached its owners, it was no longer news.
Starting the following year, 1930, they informed the press who were the nominees the same day the awards were to be delivered. That’s how it was until the newspaper Los Angeles Times got carried away by him excitement of a scoop and interviewed future winners who didn’t even know they would actually win.
Therefore, since 1941each Oscar winner is announced in a closed and sealed envelope that is opened at the moment.
Each statuette that is delivered at the Oscars is legally protected to prevent its winners or their heirs from reselling it when they no longer want to see it on their showcases or fireplaces.
If they wanted to do it anyway, they must first pay the Hollywood Academy the symbolic price of US$ 1. If the winner does not want to do so, AMPAS will keep the statuette.
Although it seems absurd, it is since 1950 when it became known that several statuettes were sold at auction for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The controversy surrounding who owns the Oscar sparked a debate in 2011, when the descendants of filmmaker Orson Wells auctioned off the statuette that the director of Citizen Kane he had won in 1941, half a century earlier. To learn more about the history of the statuettes, “This is the story of the Oscar statuette”
The Hollywood Academy could not prevent to be raffled off at auctionWells’ statuette since in 2004 the courts agreed with his heirs who claimed to be able to commercially dispose of the award since Wells had never signed a paper to return the statuette to the Academy the day he no longer wanted to have it.
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Katherine Hepburn y Meryl Streep
Both actresses share the credit for having received the most statuettes and the most nominations. More details in web profile: “Oscar 2023: Who were the actresses who won the most statuettes in the history of the award”.
Katherine Hepburn and Meryl Streep are a little bean next to the figure of John Williams, surely unknown to the general public. Orchestra director, pianist and trombonist, it would be enough to listen to just a few staves of his melodies to understand why he was nominated 50 times from the Hollywood Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
It’s true, he only took the statuette home 5 times, but this 91-year-old New Yorker continues to be the perfect ear for all – or almost all of Steven Spielberg’s films, among other heavyweights in the industry. John Willimas musicalized: ET, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, Superman, Catch Me If You Can, Harry Potter, Star Wars, The Poseidon Adventure, etc. In addition, several Olympic Games, news and television programs.
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The movie that brought luck
The film that unintentionally brought together the largest number of Academy Award winners was Nice gesture (1939, William A. Wellman): Gary Cooper, Susan Hayward, Broderick Crawford, and Ray Milland. At that time, none of them had won a statuette, so this American film that recounts the adventures of some soldiers in the French Foreign Legion brought them luck.
Despite the fact that they intended to be “inclusive” from the beginning by choosing the figure of an Indian as the image of the statuette, the first black actress to receive an Oscar Award was the endearing Hattie McDaniel, at the 1940 ceremony.
Originally from Wichita, Kansas, Vivien Leigh’s maid in gone With the Wind (1939, Victor Fleming) also appeared on two United States stamps and has two stars on the Hall of Fame of Hollywood, not only because of the various films in which he always played “good-hearted maid” but also for his participation in radio (he was a singer).
“I prefer to act as a servant and earn 700 dollars weekly Be a servant and earn 7 dollars”, replied Hattie McDaniel when asked if she had any objections about the roles for which Hollywood called her.
Some critics made calculations of the amount of non-whites who were nominated to the Oscars and the percentage was less than 10% from 1929 to the measurement date. In fact, it was also criticized that actors “playing Asians” were nominated more times than real Asians. Therefore, in 2016 a boycott who responded to the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite achieved changes.
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Best Foreign Film
It took 29 years for members of the Academy to look to the side and pay attention to the rest of the world’s cinematography. Only at the ceremony on March 27, 1957 was the Best Foreign Film category introduced and the chosen film was The street (1954, Federico Fellini). Before it was only given as a special prize.
The first time it aired on televisionThe Oscar Awards ceremony was in 1953, by the United States chain NBC, which renewed the contract until 1960, the year in which those rights passed into the hands of ABC.
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Basketball took away audience
For more than 60 years, the Awards ceremony has been held between March and April. However, the ceremony was brought forward to the last week of February or the first of March so that it did not coincide with the Championship of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball, which took away audiences.
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