OSCAR HISTORY
Oscar? Landmark
In the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel - The attendance was 250 and tickets cost $10. It was a long banquet, filled with speeches, but presentation of the statuettes took only five minutes.
Break in the Tradition
There have been only 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 by 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 8 April, the day set for the Awards. In 1981, the Awards were postponed for 24 hours due to the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan.
In 2003, after U. S. forces invaded Iraq the Tuesday before the telecast, the show went on, but the red carpet was reduced to the area immediately in front of the theater entrance, the red carpet bleachers were eliminated and the bulk of the world's press was uninvited.
In 2004, the red carpet was back in all its glamour. Today, attendance at the Annual Academy Awards is by invitation only. No tickets are put on public sale. The ceremonies honoring 2005 achievements in motion pictures will be held on Sunday, 5 March, 2006. The 78th Annual Academy Awards? Presentation will be broadcast live from the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland?.
OSCAR STATUETTE STORY
Shortly after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was organized in 1927, a dinner was held in the Crystal Ballroom of the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles to discuss methods of honoring outstanding achievements, thus encouraging higher levels of quality in all facets of motion picture production.
THE CREATION OF THE TROPHY
A major item of the business discussed was the creation of a trophy to symbolize the recognition of film achievement. MGM art director Cedric Gibbons designed the statuette and Los Angeles sculptor George Stanley was selected to bring to three-dimensional form the figure of a knight standing on a reel of film, hands gripping a sword. The Academy's world-renowned statuette was born.
Since the initial awards banquet on 16 May, 1929, at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel's Blossom Room, 2,530 statuettes have been presented. Each January, additional new golden statuettes are cast, molded, polished and buffed by R S Owens and Company, the Chicago awards specialty company retained by the Academy since 1983 to make the award.
Since 2000, when the shipment of Oscars on its way from the Owens plant in Chicago was stolen from the shipper's dock in Bell, California, the Academy always keeps a show's-worth of statuettes on hand.
THE TROPHY
Initially Oscar? was gold-plated bronze, for a while plaster, and today gold-plated britannium, a pewter-like alloy. He stands 13 1/2 inches tall and weighs a robust 8 1/2 pounds. He hasn't been altered since his molten birth, except when the pedestal was made higher in 1945.
Achievements in up to 24 regular categories will be honored on 5 March, 2006, at the 78th Annual Academy Awards? Presentation at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland?. However, the Academy won't know how many statuettes it will actually hand out until the envelopes are opened on Oscar night. Although the number of categories and special awards is known prior to the ceremony, the possibility of ties and of multiple recipients sharing the prize in some categories makes the exact number of Oscar statuettes to be awarded unpredictable.
The Oscar statuette is arguably the most recognized award in the world. Its success as a symbol of achievement in filmmaking would doubtless amaze those who attended that dinner 78 years ago, as well as its designer, Cedric Gibbons.
It stands today, as it has since 1929, without peer, on the mantels of the greatest filmmakers in history.
