The
suspense which now touches most of the world at Oscar time was not
always a characteristic of the Awards. At first the winners were
known prior to the Awards banquets. Results were given in advance
to the newspapers for publication at 11 p.m. on the night of the
Awards. But in 1940, guests arriving for the affair could buy the
8:45 p.m. edition of the Los Angeles Times, which announced the
winning achievements. As a result, the sealed-envelope system was
adopted the next year and remains in use today.
Since
the earliest years, interest in the Academy Awards has run high,
if not at the modern fever-pitch. The first presentation was the
only one to escape a media audience, but by the second year
enthusiasm for the Awards was so high that a Los Angeles radio
station actually did a live, one-hour broadcast. The Awards have
had broadcast coverage since.
For
15 years the Academy Awards Presentations were banquet affairs
held, after the first in the Blossom Room, at the Ambassador and
Biltmore hotels. The custom of presenting the statuettes at a
banquet was discontinued after 1942. Increased attendance and the
war had made banquets impractical, and the presentation ceremonies
have since been held in theaters.
The 16th Awards ceremony was held at Grauman's Chinese Theater and
was covered by network radio for the first time and broadcast
overseas to American GIs. The Awards stayed at Grauman's for three
years, then moved to the Los Angeles Shrine Auditorium.
Two
years later, in March 1949, the 21st Awards were held in the
Academy's own Melrose Avenue theater. For the next 10 years the
annual Awards were held at the RKO Pantages Theater in Hollywood.
It was here, on March 19, 1953, that the Academy Awards
Presentation was first televised. The NBC-TV and radio network
carried the 25th Academy Awards ceremonies live from Hollywood
with Bob Hope as master of ceremonies and from the NBC
International Theater in New York with Fredric March making the
presentations. In 1961, the Awards moved to the Santa Monica Civic
Auditorium and for the next 10 years the ABC-TV and radio network
handled the broadcasting duties.
In
1966, the Oscars were first broadcast in color. From 1971 through
1975 the NBC-TV network carried the Awards. ABC has televised the
show since 1976 and is under contract through 2008.
On
April 14, 1969, the 41st Academy Awards ceremonies moved to the
brand new Dorothy Chandler Pavilion of the Music Center of Los
Angeles County. It was the first major event for this
world-renowned cultural center.
The
Awards remained at the Music Center until 1986, when the
ceremonies returned to the Shrine Auditorium for the 60th and 61st
Awards. Since then the Awards have moved back and forth between
the Shrine and the Music Center. The larger Shrine Auditorium
(6,000 seats) is used principally to afford Academy members an
opportunity to attend the ceremony, an opportunity that is
severely limited by the Music Center's size (about 2,500 seats).
In
the first year, 15 statuettes were awarded, all of them to men
except for Janet Gaynor. In the second year, the number of awards
was reduced to seven - two for acting and one each for Best
Picture, Directing, Writing, Cinematography and Art Direction.
Since
then, the Awards have grown slowly, but steadily, not only in
audience count, but in the fields of achievement covered.
The
need for special awards beyond standard categories was recognized
from the start. Two were awarded for the 1927/28 year: one went to
Warner Bros. for producing the pioneer talking picture, THE JAZZ
SINGER, and the other went to Charlie Chaplin for producing,
directing, writing and starring in THE CIRCUS. In 1934, three new
categories were added: Film Editing, Music Scoring and Best Song.
That year also brought a write-in campaign to nominate Bette Davis
for her performance in OF HUMAN BONDAGE. The Academy now has a
rule forbidding write-ins on the final ballot. Price Waterhouse
signed with the Academy that year and has been employed ever since
to tabulate and ensure the secrecy of the results, although the
company is now known as PricewaterhouseCoopers.
In
1936, the first Oscars were presented in the Supporting Actor and
Actress categories. The honors went to Walter Brennan for COME AND
GET IT and Gale Sondergaard for ANTHONY ADVERSE.
The
first presentation of the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award was
made in 1937, with the honor going to Darryl F. Zanuck.
The
Academy Award for Special Effects was added in 1939 and was first
won by 20th Century-Fox for THE RAINS CAME.
In
1941, the documentary film category appeared on the ballot for the
first time. In 1947, long before the Awards ceremonies would
become the global event that they are today, the Academy brought
foreign countries into the field of Oscar recognition. That year
the first Award to honor a foreign language motion picture was
given to the Italian film, SHOE-SHINE. The following year the
Academy placed Costume Design on the ballot. The Jean Hersholt
Humanitarian Award was established in 1956 and presented that year
to Y. Frank Freeman. In 1963, the special effects award was split
into two: Sound Effects and Special Visual Effects, in recognition
of the fact that the best sound effects and best visual effects
did not necessarily come from the same film. The most recent
additions, Makeup and the Gordon E. Sawyer Award for technological
contributions, were established in 1981.
There
have only been three circumstances that interrupted the scheduled
presentation of the Academy Awards. The first was in 1938 when
destructive floods all but washed out Los Angeles and delayed the
ceremonies one week. The Awards ceremony was postponed two days in
1968 out of respect for Dr. Martin Luther King, who had been
assassinated a few days earlier and whose funeral was held on
April 8, the day set for the Awards. In 1981, the Awards were
postponed for 24 hours due to the assassination attempt on
President Ronald Reagan.
Attendance
at the Annual Academy Awards is by invitation only. No tickets are
put on public sale.
