The Academy Awards was first held on May 16, 1929 at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood. The ceremony, which was hosted by Douglas Fairbanks and William C. DeMille (older brother of Cecil), honored films from 1927 and 1928. Rather than being a big, glitzy production, the first Academy Awards was a private dinner held for less than 250 people. This year will be the 81st Academy Awards ceremony and will be held across the street from the Hotel Roosevelt in the Kodak Theatre. Every year, the awards have been broadcast, first on the radio, then on television (after it became more popular) starting in 1953.
There have been three times in the past that the Academy Awards have not taken place as usual. Flooding in Los Angeles delayed the ceremony by a week in 1938. The ceremony was delayed two days in 1968 out of respect for Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated on April 4th and whose funeral was held on April 9th. The ceremony went on as scheduled in 2003, just days after the U.S. invaded Iraq, but there was a limited red carpet and no bleachers outside for fans.
The Oscar nominees and winners are determined by members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, created by Louis B. Mayer. The Academy, as it is often referred to, is made up of about 6,000 motion picture professionals. Membership is by invitation only to people who work in one of five branches of motion pictures: actors, directors, writers, technicians, and producers.
You know how secretive the Academy is about the results. The first ten years of the awards, the results were actually given to newspapers so they could publish the info in a timely manner. However, when the Los Angeles Times jumped the gun in 1940 and printed the winners before the ceremonies, that was stopped and the envelope method of delivery began. As you probably know, PricewaterhouseCoopers certifies the balloting.
The Oscar itself is gold-plated britannium and weighs about 8.5 pounds. Its design is an art deco interpretation of a knight holding a sword in front of him. He is standing on a reel of film which has five spokes, each one representing a branch of the Academy. No one really knows where the name Oscar came from but there are several theories. The most plausible seems to be an accident. An executive secretary for the Academy, Margaret Herrick, is said to have named the statue after her Uncle Oscar because it looked like him. A columnist reportedly overheard this and wrote that employees had named the statue “Oscar.”
(This image, by Alan Light, is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License.)
Don’t plan on owning an Oscar unless you are highly talented, have a family member who has won one, or happen to find one given out before 1950. In 1950, the Academy decided that while the Oscar is property of the recipient, if he or she wishes to sell it, they have to first offer it to the Academy for the grand sum of $1. Oscars given out before 1950 may been seen on the auction block occasionally, but you had better be ready to cough up at least six figures to get one.