Universal Film Magazine - Issue 8 - www.ufmag.biz

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Universal FilmIssue 8 - 2013THE OSCARSby Tyrone D MurphyA BIT OF HISTORY!31st Academy Awards Presentations,Pantages Theater, Hollywood, 1959Publication:Los Angeles TimesHeadquarters buildingAcademy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...The Academy Awards, informally known as The Oscars,are a set of awards given annually for excellenceof cinematic achievements. The Oscar statuetteis officially named the Academy Award ofMerit and is one of nine types of Academy Awards.Organized and overseen by the Academy of Motion PictureArts and Sciences (AMPAS),the awards are given eachyear at a formal ceremony. The AMPAS was originallyconceived by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio executiveLouis B. Mayer as a professional honorary organizationto help improve the film industry’s image andhelp mediate labor disputes. The awards themselveswere later initiated by the Academy as awards “of meritfor distinctive achievement” in the industry.The awards were first given in 1929 at a ceremony createdfor the awards, at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood. Over theyears that the award has been given, the categories presentedhave changed; currently Oscars are given in more than adozen categories, and include films of various types. As oneof the most prominent award ceremonies in the world, theAcademy Awards ceremony is televised live in more than 100countries annually. It is also the oldest award ceremony inthe media; its equivalents, the Grammy Awards (for music),the Emmy Awards (for television), and the Tony Awards (fortheater), are modeled after the Academy Awards.The first awards were presented on May 16, 1929, at a privatebrunch at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with an audience ofabout 270 people. The post Academy Awards party was heldat the Mayfair Hotel. The cost of guest tickets for that night’sceremony was $5. Fifteen statuettes were awarded, honoringartists, directors and other personalities of the filmmakingindustry of the time for their works during the 1927–1928period.Winners had been announced three months earlier; however,that was changed in the second ceremony of the Academy“AMPASFormation wasin May 11,1927Awards in 1930. Since then and during the first decade, theresults were given to newspapers for publication at 11 pm onthe night of the awards. This method was used until the LosAngeles Times announced the winners before the ceremonybegan; as a result, the Academy has since 1941 used a sealedenvelope to reveal the name of the winners.For the first six ceremonies, the eligibility periodspanned two calendar years. For example, the 2ndAcademy Awards presented on April 3, 1930, recognizedfilms that were released between August 1,1928 and July 31, 1929. Starting with the 7th AcademyAwards, held in 1935, the period of eligibility becamethe full previous calendar year from January 1 toDecember 31.The first Best Actor awarded was Emil Jannings, for his performancesin The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh. Hehad to return to Europe before the ceremony, so the Academyagreed to give him the prize earlier; this made him the firstAcademy Award winner in history. The honored professionalswere awarded for all the work done in a certain categoryfor the qualifying period; for example, Jannings received theaward for two movies in which he starred during that period.Since the fourth ceremony, the system changed, and professionalswere honored for a specific performance in a singlefilm. As of the 83rd Academy Awards ceremony held in 2011,a total of 2,809 Oscars have been given for 1,853 awards. Atotal of 302 actors have won Oscars in competitive acting categoriesor have been awarded Honorary or Juvenile Awards.The 1939 film Beau Geste is the only movie that features asmany as four Academy Award winners for Best Actor in aLeading Role (Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, Susan Hayward,Broderick Crawford) prior to any of the actors receiving theBest Actor Award.At the 29th ceremony, held on March 27, 1957, the Best For-19www.ufmag.org
eign Language Film category wasintroduced. Until then, foreign-languagefilms were honored with theSpecial Achievement Award.Made of gold-plated britannium on ablack metal base, it is 13.5 in (34 cm)tall, weighs 8.5 lb (3.85 kg) and depictsa knight rendered in Art Deco styleholding a crusader’s sword standingon a reel of film with five spokes.The five spokes each represent theoriginal branches of the Academy: Actors,Writers, Directors, Producers, andTechnicians.In 1928, MGM’s art director CedricGibbons, one of the original Academymembers, supervised the design ofthe award trophy by printing the designon a scroll. In need of a modelfor his statuette, Gibbons was introducedby his future wife Dolores delRío to Mexican film director and actorEmilio “El Indio” Fernández. Reluctantat first, Fernández was finally convincedto pose nude to create whattoday is known as the “Oscar”. Then,sculptor George Stanley (who also didthe Muse Fountain at the HollywoodBowl) sculpted Gibbons’s design inclay and Sachin Smith cast the statuettein 92.5 percent tin and 7.5 percentcopper and then gold-plated it.The original Oscar mold was cast in1928 at the C.W. Shumway & SonsFoundry in Batavia, Illinois, which alsocontributed to casting the molds forthe Vince Lombardi Trophy and EmmyAwards statuettes.In support of the American effortin World War II, the statuettes weremade of plaster and were traded infor gold ones after the war had ended.The root of the name Oscar is contested.One biography of Bette Davisclaims that she named the Oscar afterher first husband, band leader HarmonOscar Nelson; one of the earliestmentions in print of the term Oscardates back to a Time magazine articleabout the 1934 6th Academy Awards.Walt Disney is also quoted as thankingthe Academy for his Oscar as earlyas 1932. Another claimed origin is thatthe Academy’s Executive Secretary,Margaret Herrick, first saw the awardin 1931 and made reference to the sta-tette’s reminding her of her “Uncle Oscar”(a nickname for her cousin OscarPierce).Since 1950, the statuettes have beenlegally encumbered by the requirementthat neither winners nor theirheirs may sell the statuettes withoutfirst offering to sell them back to theAcademy for US$1. If a winner refusesto agree to this stipulation, then theAcademy keeps the statuette.Academy membership is divided intodifferent branches, with each representinga different discipline in filmproduction. Actors constitute thelargest voting bloc, numbering1,311 members 22% of the Academy’scomposition. Votes havebeen certified by the auditingfirm PricewaterhouseCoopers(and its predecessor Price Waterhouse)for the past 73 annualawards ceremonies.ACADEMY AWARDAll AMPAS members must be invitedto join by the Board of Governors, onbehalf of Academy Branch ExecutiveCommittees. Membership eligibilitymay be achieved by a competitivenomination or a member may submita name based on other significantcontribution to the field of motionpictures.New membership proposals are consideredannually. The Academy doesnot publicly disclose its membership,although as recently as 2007 press releaseshave announced the names ofthose who have been invited to join.The 2007 release also stated that ithas just under 6,000 voting members.While the membership had beengrowing.In May 2011, the Academy sent aletter advising its 6,000 or so votingmembers that an online system forOscar voting will be implemented in2013Universal FilmIssue 8 - 2013VENUEIn 1929, the firstAcademy Awardswere presented at abanquet dinner at theHollywood Roosevelt Hotel.From 1930–1943, the ceremonyalternated between twovenues: the Ambassador Hotelon Wilshire Boulevard and theBiltmore Hotel in downtown LosAngeles.Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywoodthen hosted the awards from1944 to 1946, followed by the ShrineAuditorium in Los Angeles from 1947 to1948. The 21st Academy Awards in 1949were held at the Academy Award Theaterat what was the Academy’s headquartersin Hollywood.From 1950 to 1960, the awards werepresented at Hollywood’s PantagesTheatre. With the advent of television,the 1953–1957 awards took placesimultaneously in Hollywood andNew York first at the NBC InternationalTheatre (1953) and then at theNBC Century Theatre (1954–1957),after which the ceremony tookplace solely in Los Angeles. TheOscars moved to the SantaMonica Civic Auditorium inSanta Monica, California in1961. By 1969, the Academydecided to movethe ceremonies backto Los Angeles,AMPAS was originally conceived byMetro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio executiveLouis B. Mayer. He is generallycited as the creator of the “starsystem” within Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in its golden years.www.ufmag.org20
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