The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)[1] to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers. The formal ceremony at which the awards are
presented is among the most prominent and most watched film awards ceremonies in the
world. The 1st Academy Awards ceremony was held on Thursday, May 16, 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt
Hotel in Hollywood to honor outstanding film achievements of
1927 and 1928. It was hosted by actor
Douglas Fairbanks and director William C.
DeMille. Most recently, the 79th Academy Awards ceremony was held on Sunday,
February 25, 2007 at the Kodak
Theatre in Hollywood to honor outstanding film achievements of
2006. It was hosted by day-time television talk show
host Ellen DeGeneres. The 80th Academy
Awards ceremony is scheduled for Sunday, February 24, 2008 and will be hosted by Comedy Central's The Daily Show host, Jon Stewart. AMPAS, a professional honorary
organization, maintains a voting membership of 5,830 as of 2007. Actors constitute the largest voting bloc, numbering 1,311
members (22 percent) of the Academy's composition. Votes for Oscars have been tabulated and certified by the auditing firm
PricewaterhouseCoopers (and its predecessor Price Waterhouse) for the past 72 annual awards ceremonies.[2]
The Oscar
The official name of the Oscar statuette is the Academy Award of Merit. Made of
gold-plated britannium on a black metal base, it is
13.5 in (34 cm) tall, weighs 8.5 lb (3.85 kg) and depicts a knight rendered
in Art Deco style holding a crusader's sword standing on a reel of film with five spokes. The five spokes each represent
the original branches of the Academy: Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers and Technicians.[3] MGM’s art director Cedric Gibbons, one of the original Academy members, supervised the design of the award trophy by printing the design on scroll.[4]
In need of a model for his statue Gibbons was introduced by his then wife Dolores del
Río to Emilio "El Indio" Fernández. Reluctant at first, Fernández was finally
convinced to pose naked to create what today it is known as the "Oscar". Then sculptor George Stanley sculpted Gibbons' design in
clay, and Alex Smith cast the statue in tin and copper and then gold-plated it over a composition of 92.5 percent
tin and 7.5 percent copper. The only addition to the Oscar since it
was created is a minor streamlining of the base. Approximately 40 Oscars are made each year in Chicago, Illinois by the manufacturer, R.S. Owens. If they
fail to meet strict quality control standards, the statuettes are cut in half and melted down.[5]
The root of the name "Oscar" is contested. One biography of Bette Davis claims that she
named the Oscar after her first husband, bandleader Harmon Oscar Nelson.[6] Another claimed origin is that of the Academy’s Executive Secretary, Margaret Herrick, who first saw the award in 1931 and made reference of the statuette reminding her of
her Uncle Oscar. Columnist Sidney Skolsky was present during Herrick’s naming and seized the name in his byline, "Employees have
affectionately dubbed their famous statuette 'Oscar'" (Levy 2003). Both Oscar and Academy Award are registered
trademarks of the Academy, fiercely protected through litigation and threats thereof.
As of the most recent ceremony held in 2007, a total of 2,681 Oscars have been
awarded.[7] 290 different actors have won an acting Oscar
(including Honorary awards and Juvenile awards). Of these, 144 are still alive today.
Ownership of Oscar statuettes
Since 1950, the statuettes have been legally encumbered by the requirement that neither winners nor their heirs may sell the
statuettes without first offering to sell them back to the Academy for $1. If a winner refuses to agree to this stipulation, then
the Academy keeps the statuette. Academy Awards not protected by this agreement have been sold in public auctions and private
deals for six-figure sums (Levy 2003).
This rule is highly controversial, since it implies that the winner does not own the award.[8] The case of Michael Todd's grandson trying to
sell Todd's Oscar statuette illustrates that there are many who do not agree with this idea. When Todd's grandson attempted to
sell Todd's Oscar statuette to a movie prop collector, the Academy won the legal battle by getting a permanent injunction.
Although some Oscar sales transactions have been successful, the buyers have subsequently returned the statuettes to the Academy,
which keeps them in its treasury.
Academy membership
All members must be invited to join. Invitation comes from the Board of Governors, on behalf of Academy Branch Executive
Committees. Membership eligibility may be achieved by a competitive nomination or a member may submit a name based on other
significant contribution to the field of motion pictures. Though winning an Academy Award usually results in an invitation to
join, membership is not automatic.
New membership proposals are considered annually. The Academy does not publicly disclose its membership, although as recently
as 2007 press releases have announced the names of those who have been invited to join. The 2007 release also stated that it has
"just under" 6,000 voting members; though the membership had been growing until 2003, stricter policies have kept its size steady
since then.[9]
Academy membership is divided into 15 Branches, representing different disciplines in motion pictures. Members whose work does
not fall within one of the Branches may belong to a group known as "Members At Large."
Nominations
Today, according to Rules 2 and 3 of the official Academy Awards Rules, a film must open in the previous calendar year, from
midnight at the start of January 1 to midnight
at the end of December 31, in Los Angeles
County, California, to qualify.[10] Rule 2 states
that a film must be "feature-length", defined as a minimum of 40 minutes, except for short subject awards and it must exist
either on a 35 mm or 70 mm film print or on
24 fps or 48 fps progressive scan
digital film print with native resolution not less than 1280x720.
The members of the various branches nominate those in their respective fields while all members may submit nominees for Best
Picture. The winners are then determined by a second round of voting in which all members are then allowed to vote in most
categories, including Best Picture.[11]
As of the 79th Annual Academy Awards, 847 members (past and present) of the
Screen Actors Guild have been nominated for an Oscar (in all categories).
Awards night
The major awards are given out at a live televised ceremony, most commonly in February or March following the relevant
calendar year, and six weeks after the announcement of the nominees. This is an elaborate extravaganza, with the invited guests
walking up the red carpet in the creations of the most prominent fashion designers of the day.
Black tie dress is the most common outfit for men, although fashion may dictate not wearing a
bowtie, and musical performers typically do not adhere to this (the artists who recorded the
nominees for Best Original Song quite often perform those songs live at the awards ceremony, and the fact that they are
performing is often used to promote the television broadcast). The Academy has for several years claimed that the award show has
a billion viewers internationally, but this has so far not been confirmed by any independent sources. Neither has the Academy
explained how it has reached this figure.
The Academy Awards is the only awards ceremony televised live across the United States excluding Alaska and Hawaii; the Emmys,
Golden Globes, and Grammys are broadcast live
in the East Coast, but they are on tape delay in the West Coast.
The Awards show was first televised on NBC in 1953. NBC continued to
broadcast the event until 1960 when the ABC Network took over, televising
the festivities through 1970, after which NBC reassumed the broadcasts. ABC once again took over broadcast duties in 1976; it has contracted to do so through the
year 2014.[12]
After more than sixty years of being held in late March or early April, the ceremonies were moved up to late February or early
March starting in 2004 to help disrupt and shorten the intense lobbying and ad
campaigns associated with Oscar season in the film industry. The earlier date is also to advantage of ABC, as it currently
usually occurs during the highly profitable and important February sweeps period. The
Awards show holds the distinction of having won the most Emmys in history, with 38 wins and
167 nominations.[13]
On March 30, 1981, the awards ceremony was postponed for one
day after the shooting of President Ronald Reagan and others in
Washington, D.C. In 2007, the awards event itself was designated a National Special Security Event by the United States Department of Homeland Security.
Movie studios are strictly prohibited from advertising movies during the broadcast.
Since 2002 movie stars have been seen arriving at the Academy Awards in hybrid
vehicles;[14] during the telecast of the 79th
Academy Awards in 2007, Leonardo DiCaprio and former vice president Al Gore announced that ecologically intelligent practices had been integrated into the planning and execution of
the Oscar presentation and several related events.[15]
Venues
The 1st Academy Awards were presented at a banquet dinner at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood. Subsequent
banquet ceremonies in the 1930s and early 40s were held in Los Angeles at either
The Ambassador Hotel or the Biltmore
Hotel.
Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood then hosted the awards from 1944 to
1946, followed by the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles from 1947 to 1948. The
21st Academy Awards in 1949 were held at the "Academy Award Theater" at the
Academy's then-headquarters on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood.[16]
From 1950 to 1960, the awards were presented at Hollywood's Pantages
Theater. The Oscars then moved to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium
in Santa Monica, California in 1961. By 1968, the Academy decided to move the
ceremonies back to Los Angeles, this time at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in
the Los Angeles Music Center. The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion hosted 20
consecutive Oscar ceremonies until 1988, when the Academy started to alternate between the Music Center and the Shrine
Auditorium.
In 2002, Hollywood's Kodak Theater became the first permanent home of the awards. It is
connected to the Hollywood & Highland Center, which contains 640,000 square feet (59,000 m²) of space including retail, restaurants, nightclubs,
other establishments and a six-screen cinema. In fact, the Grand Staircase columns at the Kodak
Theater showcase every movie that has won the Best Picture title since the first Academy Awards in 1928.
Criticism
Critics have noted that many Best Picture Academy Award winners in the past have not stood the test of time. Several of these
films, such as Around the World in 80 Days,
Grand Hotel and Cecil B. DeMille's
The Greatest Show on Earth are often considered to have aged poorly
and to have little of the impact they had on their initial release.[17][18][19] Several films that currently have wide critical approval were not named
Best Picture.[20] The most commonly cited example is
Citizen Kane, which received glowing critical reviews and was nominated for nine
Oscars but won only one (Best Original Screenplay). This
film has since come to be regarded by many as one of the greatest American
films of all time.[citation needed]
It has been suggested that actors are at a disadvantage in comedic roles, as few acting awards
have been given for performances in films that could be considered primarily comedic. Notable examples of actors who have
received Oscars for comedic roles are James Stewart in The Philadelphia Story, Judy Holliday in
Born Yesterday, Josephine Hull in
Harvey, Jack Lemmon in Mister Roberts, Peter Ustinov in Topkapi, Walter Matthau in The Fortune Cookie, Goldie Hawn in Cactus Flower, George Burns in The Sunshine Boys, Diane Keaton in Annie Hall, Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost, Jack Palance in City Slickers, Jack Nicholson in As Good as It Gets, Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda and Jessica Lange in
Tootsie. This was joked upon at the 2007 awards by Jack
Black, John C. Reilly, and Will
Ferrell.[21][22] It has also been suggested that Oscar winners occasionally receive awards that
are given more in commemoration of an entire career or of past unrecognized achievements than in honor of the specific work for
which the recipient is nominated. One example is Judi Dench's brief (eight minutes) screen
appearance in Shakespeare in Love, for which she won the 1998 Best Supporting
Actress award, one year after she was unsuccessful in the Best Actress category for Mrs.
Brown. Another is Martin Scorsese's Best Director award for
The Departed (2006), after his unsuccessful nominations for several highly acclaimed
films such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull,
and Goodfellas.
Studios also lobby heavily for their films to be considered, leading to the complaint that nominations and awards may be
largely a result of this lobbying rather than the quality of the material.[23]
A point of contention is the lack of consideration of non-English language films for categories other than Best Foreign
Language Film: very few foreign films have been nominated for any other categories, regardless of artistic merit. As of 2007,
only eight foreign language films have been nominated for Best Picture: Grand
Illusion (French, 1938); Z (French, 1969); The Emigrants (Swedish, 1972); Cries and
Whispers (Swedish, 1973); Il Postino (Italian/Spanish, 1995);
Life Is Beautiful (Italian, 1998); Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Chinese Mandarin, 2000); and Letters from Iwo Jima (Japanese, 2006). None of these won Best Picture, though Z,
Life Is Beautiful and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon all won Best Foreign Language Film, and Life is
Beautiful also won Best Actor for Roberto Benigni. (As for the others, Grand
Illusion predated the Best Foreign Language Film category; Letters from Iwo Jima was ineligible because it was
produced in the U.S.; Cries and Whispers and Il Postino were not nominated; The Emigrants was nominated the
year before but did not win.) On the other hand, Pan's Labyrinth (Mexico, 2006)
won three Oscars even though it wasn't nominated for Best Picture and it lost Best Foreign Language Film; Sophia Loren also won her Best Actress Oscar for a foreign-language performance in Two Women (Italian, 1960). In addition, The
Motorcycle Diaries (in Spanish and Quechua, 2004) won for Best Original Song ("Al otro lado del río") despite being an international
co-production between seven different countries, none of which were able to submit it for Best Foreign Language Film
consideration.
Awards
Although never even nominated for a competitive Oscar for any of his acting performances, comedian
Bob
Hope received five honorary Oscars for contributions to cinema and humanitarian work.
Academy Awards of Merit
Current Awards
Retired Awards
In the first year of the awards, the Best Director category was split into separate Drama and Comedy categories. At times, the
Best Original Score category has been split into separate Drama and Comedy/Musical categories. Today, the Best Original Score
category is one category. From the 1930s through the 1960s, the Cinematography, Art Direction, and Costume Design awards were
split into separate categories for black and white and color films.
Newest Awards
The newest awards to be added to the list of available awards from the Academy are the awards for:
Proposed Awards
The Board of Governors meets each year and considers other new categories. To date, the following proposed awards have not
been approved:
- Best Casting: rejected in 1999
- Best Stunt Coordination: rejected in 1999; rejected in 2005[24]
- Best Title Design: rejected in 1999
Special Awards
These awards are voted on by special committees, rather than by the Academy membership as a whole, but the actor/actress voted
to receive the special award can turn down the offer.
Current Special Awards
Retired Special Award
Academy Award records
Film records
- Only three films have won Best Picture, Best
Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay, a feat which is known as winning the "Big Five" or the Oscar "Grand Slam." These films are: It Happened One Night
(1934), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), and
The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
- The three films which have been awarded 11 Oscars each are Ben-Hur (1959), Titanic (1997),
and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the
King (2003). Of these, only The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won every Oscar for which it was
nominated.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the
King (2003) is the first fantasy or science
fiction film to win the Oscar for Best Picture.
- The film which received the most Oscars without winning Best Picture is Cabaret (1972) with 8 awards. Although the film was nominated for Best Picture, it lost to
The Godfather (1972).
- The two most nominated films of all time are All About Eve (1950) and
Titanic (1997), both with 14 nominations. All About Eve won 6 awards,
and Titanic won 11 awards.
- The two films which share the record for most nominations (11) with no Oscar wins are The Turning Point (1977) and The Color
Purple (1985).
- Dreamgirls (2006) has the most nominations, (8), without ones for writing
or directing. It is also the first film to have the most nominations in one year (2006) without one for Best Picture.
- The film with the most nominations without a Best Picture nomination is They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) with nine nominations. (That same year,
Anne of the Thousand Days (1969) received the highest amount of
nominations [at 10], including Best Picture.)
- Grand Hotel (1932) is the only Best Picture winner to receive no other
nominations.
- The first (and only) X-rated film to win the Best Picture Oscar is
Midnight Cowboy (1969).
- The first (and only) G-rated film to win the Best Picture Oscar is
Oliver! (1968).
- The first (and only) animated film ever to be nominated for Best
Picture is Beauty and the Beast (1991). This is also the
first (and only) animated film to receive a record six Oscar nominations.
- No film to date has ever produced Oscar-winning performances in the four competitive acting categories (Leading Actor,
Leading Actress, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress). The two films which came closest to achieving this feat were
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and Network (1976), with each film earning three out of the four acting Oscars.
- To date, 13 films have received Oscar nominations in each of the four competitive acting categories: My Man Godfrey (1936); Mrs. Miniver (1942);
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943); Johnny Belinda (1948); Sunset
Boulevard (1950); A Streetcar Named Desire (1951);
From Here to Eternity (1953); Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966); Bonnie and Clyde (1967); Guess Who's
Coming to Dinner (1967); Network (1976); Coming Home (1978); and Reds (1981).
- The Red Balloon (1956), a film with no dialogue, is the only such film ever
to win an Oscar (as even silent films have scripted dialogue). This film won the Best Original Screenplay Award. It is also the
only short film to win an Oscar outside of the short film categories.
Acting records
- Katharine Hepburn holds the record for winning the most Oscar awards for acting
(at 4). She won Best Actress Awards for: Morning Glory (1932/33),
Guess Who's Coming To Dinner (1967), The Lion in Winter (1968), and On Golden
Pond (1981).
- Meryl Streep holds the record for the most Oscar nominations for an actress and overall
for acting (at 14). From these 14 nominations, Streep won two Oscars: Best Supporting Actress for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) and Best Actress for Sophie's
Choice (1982).
- Jack Nicholson holds the record for the most Oscar nominations for an actor (at 12).
He has won three times. Twice as Best Actor in One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and As Good as It Gets (1997) and once as Best
Supporting Actor in Terms of Endearment (1983).
- Bette Davis and Greer Garson are the most consecutively nominated leading actress' (with
five nominations from each in a row - Davis 1938 - 1942. Garson 1941 - 1945), while Marlon
Brando is the most consecutively nominated leading actor (with four nominations from 1951-1954).
- Emma Thompson is the only actress to win an Oscar for Best Actress
(Howards End, 1992) and an Oscar for Best Screenplay (Sense and Sensibility, 1995).
- Katharine Hepburn holds the record for the longest time span between first and
last Oscar nominations (48 years from 1932/33 to 1981).
- Peter O'Toole holds the record for having the most Oscar nominations (8 for Best
Actor) without ever winning a competitive acting award. He was given an honorary Oscar in 2003.
- Richard Burton (1925-1984) received the highest amount of acting nominations (7) with
two distinctions combined. Without winning and without ever being given any kind of honorary award.
- The oldest winner of an acting Oscar is Jessica Tandy, who was 80 years old when she
won the Best Actress Award for Driving Miss Daisy (1989).
- The oldest nominee of an acting Oscar is Gloria Stuart, who was 87 years old when she
was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Award for Titanic (1997).
- Born on January 12, 1910, Luise Rainer is the oldest living Oscar nominee and winner in
an acting category.
- The youngest winner of an acting Oscar is Tatum O’Neal, who was 10 years old when she
won the Best Supporting Actress Award for Paper Moon (1973).
- The youngest nominee of an acting Oscar is Justin Henry, who was 8 years old when he
was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Award for Kramer vs. Kramer
(1979).
- May Robson has the earliest birth date of all actors ever nominated for an Oscar. Born on
April 19, 1858, Robson was nominated for the Best Actress Award at the age of 75 for Lady for
a Day (1932/33).
- At the age of 22, Kate Winslet became the youngest person ever to receive two Oscar
nominations (for Sense and Sensibility and Titanic), and each of her subsequent nominations has broken a further record: the youngest
person to receive three, four, and five nominations.
- James Dean is the only actor to receive two posthumous acting nominations. Although Dean
was killed in an automobile accident in 1955, he was nominated for the Best Actor Award in 1956 for East of Eden (1955) and again in 1957 for Giant
(1956).
- The shortest performance ever to win an acting Oscar is Beatrice Straight's
performance, which lasted 5 minutes and 40 seconds, in Network (1976). Straight
won the Best Supporting Actress Award for her role.
- The shortest performance ever to win a lead acting Oscar is Anthony Hopkins'
performance as Hannibal Lecter, with about 16-17 minutes of screen time, in The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Hopkins won the Best Actor Award for his role.
- Only two actors have received Oscar nominations for roles in which they did not speak a word. Holly Hunter was nominated for (and won) Best Actress in The
Piano, while Rinko Kikuchi was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in
Babel.
- Only two actors have ever declined to accept their Oscars. George C. Scott refused
to accept the Best Actor Award for Patton (1970); he claimed that acting should not
be competitive. Marlon Brando refused to accept the Best Actor Award for
The Godfather (1972); he sent Sacheen
Littlefeather to accept it in his behalf to protest America's treatment of indigenous peoples.
- Only five people have won acting Oscars in consecutive years. Luise Rainer won Best
Actress for The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and The Good Earth (1937). Spencer Tracy won Best Actor for
Captains Courageous (1937) and Boys
Town (1938). Katharine Hepburn won Best Actress for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) and The
Lion in Winter (1968). Jason Robards won Best Supporting Actor for
All the President's Men (1976) and Julia (1977). Tom Hanks won Best Actor for Philadelphia (1993) and Forrest Gump (1994).
- Only 16 actors have won Oscars for their screen debut performances [1] - Best
Actor: none; Best Actress: Shirley Booth, Julie
Andrews, Barbra Streisand, and Marlee
Matlin; Best Supporting Actor: Haing S. Ngor and Harold Russell; Best Supporting Actress: Gale Sondergaard,
Katina Paxinou, Mercedes McCambridge,
Eva Marie Saint, Jo Van Fleet, Tatum O'Neal, Anna Paquin, and Jennifer Hudson; and Juvenile Award: Claude Jarman Jr. and
Vincent Winter. To date, Hudson is the only African
American to do so.
- Sophia Loren is the only actress to win an Oscar for Best Actress for performance in
foreign language film.
- Laurence Olivier and Roberto Benigni are
the only people to have directed themselves to an acting Oscar. Olivier's win was for Hamlet (1948), and Benigni won for Life Is
Beautiful (1998). Neither of them won the award for Best Director.
Miscellaneous records
- George Bernard Shaw is the only person to have been awarded both an Oscar
(Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Pygmalion in 1938) and a
Nobel Prize (the Nobel Prize in
Literature in 1925). Al Gore is arguably the second person to have been awarded both a
Nobel Prize (the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 shared
with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and an Oscar
(presented by Davis Guggenheim, director of the Academy Award winning
An Inconvenient Truth, in 2007) (Nobel laureate John Steinbeck was nominated for his screenplay for Lifeboat (1944), and Nobel laureate Harold Pinter was
nominated for his screenplays for both The French Lieutenant's
Woman (1981) and Betrayal (1983)).
- Walt Disney holds the record for receiving as well as being nominated for the most
Academy Awards. He won 22 competitive awards and received four honorary awards. He was also nominated for 59 Academy Awards
during his lifetime.
- With 45 Oscar nominations, film composer John Williams is currently the most-nominated
person alive.
- Sound re-recording mixer Kevin O'Connell currently holds
the record for most Oscar nominations without a win at 19. His most recent nomination was for Apocalypto (2006).
- For the Best Director Award, John Ford holds the record for the most awards (four awards
resulting from five nominations), while William Wyler holds the record for the most
nominations (12 nominations resulting in three awards).
- Only seven directors have won Oscars for their screen debuts [2]:
Delbert Mann, Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins, Robert Redford, James L. Brooks, Kevin Costner, and Sam Mendes.
- The youngest person ever to be awarded an Oscar is Shirley Temple Black (age 6), who
was awarded the inaugural (now retired) non-competitive Academy Juvenile Award in
1934.
- The youngest person ever to be nominated for Best Director is John Singleton, who was
24 years old when he was nominated for Boyz N the Hood (1991). He is also the
first (and only) African American ever to be nominated for Best Director.
- The longest standing ovation during an awards ceremony was given to Charlie Chaplin
in 1972 after receiving his Oscar. This standing ovation lasted for a full five minutes.
- Dudley Nichols was the first artist ever to decline an Oscar. He refused to accept
the Best Writing (Screenplay) Award for The Informer (1935); he boycotted
against the Academy for its support of company unions
instead of the newly formed independent actors guilds and unions.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the
King (2003), Braveheart (1995), The
Last Emperor (1987), Gigi (1958), Around the World in Eighty Days (1956), The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), An
American in Paris (1951), Grand Hotel (1932), All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), and
