The awards were first printed on a paper scroll and then cast in gold. The statuette universally known as Oscar was designed by MGM’s art director Cedric Gibbons and created by sculptor George Stanley. At first the award was sketched as a knight holding a double-edged sword standing on a reel of film with five holes in the base. These five roles represented the industry’s original branches: producers, writers, directors, actors, and technicians. The statuette and the base have since been streamlined, but as cast the statue remains 92.5 percent tin and 7.5 percent copper with a gold-plated exterior. The Oscar statuette is thirteen-and-a-half inches tall and weighs about eight-and-a-half pounds. Although it is unclear how Oscar got his name, the award has come to be called the Nobel Prize of motion pictures.
The awards themselves were originally presented in 12 categories, but have continually grown to encompass the new and innovative ideas and inventions of the film industry. At the first ceremony there was little suspense because the award winners knew they had won three months before the banquet convened. During the second year, however, all of that changed when the results were kept a secret, adding to the allure and mystery surrounding the ceremony.
In subsequent years, the winner’s list was handed out to the media so it could be in print the next morning, until a newspaper published the names of the winners in the evening post before the awards ceremony was actually broadcast. This led the Academy to adopt the sealed-envelope system in 1941; the system is still used today.
By the time the second awards dinner was held in 1930, enthusiasm for the star-studded event was so great that a Los Angeles radio station produced an hourlong live broadcast of the evening. The ceremony has been broadcast ever since, via radio between 1930 and 1952, and then via television from 1953 forward. Broadcast in color since 1966 and internationally since 1969, the Academy Awards ceremony is now beamed to over 200 countries, dazzling hundreds of millions of movie fan across the globe. For many film enthusiasts, the Academy Awards ceremony is the highlight of their cinematic year. Although the broadcast itself often drags, the opportunity to view the parade of stars moving across the red carpet in their designer outfits and “crown jewels” and to exult and bemoan the Academy’s choices for the best of the best has made the Awards into a cultural phenomenon.
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Philip C. DiMare, Editor
Available June 2011
This provocative three-volume encyclopedia is a valuable resource for readers seeking an understanding of how movies have both reflected and helped engender America's political, economic, and social history.
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