The Enchanting History of The Oscars

However, the Oscars weren't always what we see on TV today, like everything else it had its humble beginnings to get to where it's at now. If you are a fan of the Oscars, scroll through this gallery to read about its enchanting history. 

Tickets to the private dinner cost $5, and the presentation was hosted by Douglas Fairbanks, an actor, and the Academy’s first president. The entire inaugural event lasted a total of 15 minutes. 

To date, the Academy Awards remains the longest-running entertainment awards ceremony, and it has gotten so big now that it is broadcast across the globe. The ceremony is typically free to see over the air at local TV stations, and the organizers have a long-standing relationship with ABC.

Everyone from directors to artists and other film-making industry stakeholders were summoned and appreciated for their work from 1927-1928. That ceremony lasted only 15 minutes, and the media only got word of the winners three months after the ceremony had been concluded. This was the case during the first ceremony as the organizers felt things out.

Roughly ten years later, the Los Angeles Times had gotten wind of the winners before the actual award ceremony was held, and the effect of this was information about the winners got a lot tighter for members of the media to access.

The remaining three were basically modeled after the formula of the Academy Awards, and being the first of the bunch, there remains something special about the Academy Awards, with a total of 3,140 Oscar awards issued since the ceremony was first held in 1929.

In the Italian language, "Oscar" is a general term used to describe several award ceremonies and awards, with no concern or discrimination for the field in which the honor was earned.

Although he was reportedly in Europe at the time, Jannings returned to the US just before the award ceremony was held. As a result of this, the Academy decided he should be given his prize a bit earlier, and he, therefore, became the first Academy Award winner on record. 

Rin Tin Tin was rescued by a US airman during the war in France, and it quickly became one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars. The dog was featured in 27 movies in the year the first Academy Award ceremony was held.

However, it wasn’t allowed to compete in the Best Picture category because the Academy thought it wasn’t fair to let the talkies compete with the silent movies that everyone was used to. This stance would eventually change as time passed but the organizers were quite firm on it initially.

The movie was the most expensive movie of its time, and it told the story of two pilots that had both fallen in love with the same lady. Wings remains a standout silent movie to date, as it was the only silent movie to win Best Picture for a long time until The Artist was released in 2012.

For instance, Jannings, who we talked about in one of the previous slides, earned his Oscar award for starring in two movies, and Janet Gaynor would also win an Oscar Award for her leading role in three movies. The initial system adopted by the organizers is quite different from the one in use today.

Unlike what was obtainable in the past, this time, the professionals were recognized for their specific performances in single movies rather than their entire body of work. This had an instant impact on the recognition of those that had distinguished themselves with exceptional work.

So in addition to impressing the Academy with multiple high-rated performances, you also had to do it for a minimum of two consecutive years to earn the coveted recognition.

Before the new award category was introduced in 1957, there had been little recognition for exceptional foreign language films, with the Special Achievement Award being the best they could get.

Unfortunately, the wrong Frank got the message as Frank Capra had been caught up in the moment as he ran up to meet Rogers on the stage, and claim the award, only the award was never his, and it was in fact Frank Lloyd who had been summoned.

Capra described “wishing he could have crawled under the rug like a worm,” only that wish was never granted so he made his way back and slumped in his chair like a real worm to find all his friends crying. Fortunately, he didn’t stay humiliated for very long, as he won the Best Director category at the following Academy Awards ceremony.

The ceremony was broadcast on national television in the US, and Opel streaked across the stage bearing a peace sign for all to see. The host, David Niven, was just as bemused as everyone else when all of that happened.

Although several theories have since emerged about the origin of Oscar, the most likely scenario is Margaret Herrick, an Academy librarian, remarked that the knight, shared some similarities to her uncle, who was named Oscar.

This was a historic landmark because this was the first character to have two actors win the award for playing the same character. Another time this occurrence happened was with the character of The Joker, which has seen the duo of actors Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix win Oscars for playing the role.

Unfortunately, Brady had fallen ill before the ceremony and was therefore too weak to attend. Nonetheless, her award was announced in due time, and before anyone realized what was going on, an unknown man hit the stage and collected the award, purportedly on her behalf. He would then vanish from the venue of the ceremony, and to date, no one knows what happened to the stolen award.

A short while after, a total of 52 crates were recovered by a citizen named Willie Fulgear, who made the discovery while scouring a bin behind a food store in Koreatown. Fulgear needed boxes for a house move when he found the Oscars, and in his excitement, he told the press he had more Oscars than the movie stars.

In the process, Shaw became the first individual to win a Nobel Prize and an Oscar. However, despite the significance of his win, George Bernard opted to not attend the ceremony, saying the organizers of the ceremony could just as well have sent some honor to George for being the King of England.

However, in 1940, the system that had been in place for about 10 years was broken as the nominees found out their fate before attending the ceremony for the first time.

However, the same year that McDaniel managed the feat, the ceremony was slated to be held in a hotel where there was a strict racial segregation policy, so just to have her in the building, David O. Selznick had to call in some favors.

During her popular acceptance speech, Berry remarked that the moment was a lot bigger than she was and that the win was for every woman of color for whom the door had been opened.

However, the world would soon be hit by metal shortages as a result of the raging Second World War, and the effect of this was the awards had to be made from other materials. This led to the adoption of painted plaster as the preferred material for the awards.

This caused him to return to his native Germany, where he quickly became affiliated with the propaganda machine of Joseph Goebbels, and he starred in a couple of Nazism-promoting movies. After Berlin was invaded by the Allies in 1945, Jannings was reported to have gone around with his Oscar to win over some American soldiers.

So it was only right for the organizers of the ceremony to shift the event from April 8th to April 10th. Likewise, the 1981 Academy Awards ceremony was shifted after there was an assassination attempt on the life of US President, Ronald Reagan.

Nichols' reason for turning down the award was the ongoing strike action initiated by the Screen Writers’ Guild, and it is safe to say he started the tradition of turning down the highly-coveted award, with many more to follow over the years.

Naturally, he wasn’t expected to win the category after announcing his intentions, so everyone was surprised when he was announced as the winner. It wasn’t surprising therefore that Scott opted to skip the ceremony, calling it a two-hour meat parade.

Besides not accepting his award, Brando also didn’t attend the ceremony, as he opted to send Sacheen Littlefeather to give a speech in his stead. However, she was also a Native American activist actress so she didn’t exactly share a different ideology.

After explaining Brando’s actions and thoughts, the crowd at that edition of the Oscar Awards ceremony were clearly lost and confused as to how to react, so some members of the crowd booed her while others cheered her on. Presenter Roger Moore was clearly confused so he simply took home the award that Littlefeather had declined too.

She turned up to collect her award in platform shoes and a mini tuxedo but she attended the ceremony without her father, who couldn’t make it because of his busy schedule. She won the award ahead of Linda Blair, who was four years older.

The movie stars Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio and tells the touching story of their love and how their passenger ship sank on its first-ever voyage in 1912. Like other movies with historical underpinnings, Titanic was well-received at the Oscars, beating out other popular movies.

On top of that, only eight black actresses have managed the feat in the Best Actress category. Likewise, the Best Director category has never been won by a black director, and the Academy has been correctly criticized for its lack of diversity, which is actually reflected across the entire industry.

There was an apparent and undue advantage that the Caucasians enjoyed, and this angered people, leading to hashtags such as #WhiteOscars and #OscarSoWhite. There was a big movement on social media about it, and it lead to requests for the Academy to become much more diverse and be a better representation of the people of America.

The only exception to this rule is the Best Foreign Language Film, and usually, when the moviemakers think they have a winner in view, the movie will be released in the year’s last week so it can qualify for the awards. For instance, a movie released in December will qualify for nomination in January of the following year.

However, there are some exceptions to this rule, and these include the Foreign Film, Animated Feature Film, and Documentary categories which are all handled by special committees that comprise members from across the Academy. In the case of these categories, all Academy members can vote for their choices.

Edith Head is also quite the big winner, having won more Academy Awards than any other female, with a total of 8 Oscars for her exceptional costume design work. Meryl Streep has been nominated a total of 17 times, which is more than any other actor/actress.

Over 3,000 Oscars have been awarded ever since the first award ceremony was held almost a century ago. Composer John Williams, who won five Oscars in his lifetime, could probably have picked up a couple of them and used them as dumbbells.

The thing is that kiss happened without any prior consent or warning, and although he was caught up in the excitement of his Oscar win, Halle was confused and shocked, and most importantly, the kiss was non-consensual.

They do this during the Oscar season, and the practice is one that has earned the Academy Awards endless criticism and accusations that marketing is a bigger factor that influences winning at the award ceremony than the quality of work.

The effect of this is that nominated movies are perceived worse, and the ones owned by those that initiate the smear campaign are spared from such negative perceptions. A good example of this strategy is the series of allegations levied against Zero Dark Thirty, with the intention of creating the perception that torture is justified by the project.

The Golden Globe Awards on the other hand have several winners of Asian descent in leading categories, and so some would argue that that award show is better at recognizing and celebrating diversity.

In 1953, Hondo was removed from the Best Story ballot after the movie’s inclusion in the category was questioned by letters from the producer. Two years later, High Society was withdrawn from the screenwriting ballot after it was mistaken for a movie of the same name that was released a year after.

The gift bags given out at the award ceremony can be worth as much as tens of thousands of dollars. At one point in the mid-2010s, the value of these gift bags was reportedly as much as $80,000, and the IRS even issued a statement about the taxable status of the gifts.

Before the Dolby Theatre became the number one venue of the ceremony, other venues such as Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard were used. The Chinese Theatre was used from 1944 to 1946, the Marquis Theatre was used in 1948, and the Los Angeles County Music Center was used in 1969.

For instance, the winner of the Best Picture category will typically experience improved box office earnings in the aftermath of the ceremony. Also, directors and actors that win Academy Awards are paid higher wages, and they get a lot more attention from the media.

However, some Oscar winners have been able to sell their statuettes thanks to some loopholes in the rules governing the sale of Oscars. In 2011, Beatrice Welles made $861,542 after putting up the statuette her father won in 1942.