The Academy Awards
The Beginning
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded on January 11, 1927 and it became a legal corporation on May 4, 1927.
The Members
Both the nominees and the final winners are chosen in a ballot by the Academy members.
There were 33 founding members but 231 more paid the $100 membership fee at a dinner on May 4, 1927. Now there are 5 371 members and the membership fee is $200. They have free access to the Samuel Goldwyn Movie theaters and to the private theatre of the Academy. During the Oscar campaigns they also have free access to many other movie theaters.
All the new nominees and winners become automatically members of the Academy. If someone else wants to be a member, he or she needs two referees. The members are divided into 13 divisions, biggest of them being the Acting division.
The Statue
The Oscar statuette was designed by an Academy member Cedric Gibbons, sculpted in clay by an unemployed art school graduate George Stanley and finally cast in tin and copper and gold-plated.It is 25 cm (10 inch) high and weighs 3,2 kg (7 lb).
Categories
Categories recognized for awards are:
- the best motion picture
- performance by an actor
- performance by an actress
- performance by an actor in a supporting role (since 1936)
- performance by an actress in a supporting role (since 1936)
- achievement in direction
- screenplay based on material not originally written for the screen
- original screenplay
- art direction
- cinematography
- costume design
- set decoration
- film editing
- sound achievement
- sound effects
- song
- original music score
- score of a musical picture
- live-action short subject
- cartoon short subject
- documentary feature
- documentary short subject
- special visual effects
- best make-up design (since 1982)
- foreign-language film (since 1956)
The Awards Gala
The first Oscars were given in a banquet held in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on May 16, 1929. Eligible were movies made in 1927 and 1928. The first Oscar went to Frank Borzage for directing the movie The Seventh Heaven. Alltogether 13 Oscars were given on that first "Oscar Gala".
Since 1934 the Oscars have been given by calendar years. (Meaning that for the Academy Awards Gala of the spring 1935, the eligible movies must have had their premieres between January 1, 1934 and December 31, 1934.)
The Oscar Gala was first broadcasted on February 26, 1942 and televised on May 19, 1953.
In years 1953 - 57 the Gala was held simultaneously in The RKO Pantages Theatre in Hollywood and in The NBC Century Theatre in New York because many of the acting nominees were acting on the Broadway and they did not want to travel to L.A. for one night.
When and where
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences website
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