History of the Oscars: from the first ceremony to today

On Sunday 12th March, the most famous awards ceremony of the entertainment world will take place in Los Angeles. The Oscars are awarded by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and winning one is the ultimate accolade for any actor, director, producer, writer or technician working in the world of cinema.

This year’s event will be the 95th Academy Awards. The first awards ceremony was held in 1929, just two years after the Academy was founded. There were only 12 awards up for grabs that year, and the winners had been announced three months in advance. Wings won the ultimate accolade, and it is the only silent movie ever to have won the Best Picture, Oscar. Since then, over 3,000 statuettes have been handed out.

From the very beginning, the Oscars have been about glitz and glamour. However, in 1941 America entered the Second World War and the glamour was downplayed to reflect the mood of the nation. The ceremonies still went ahead during the War, but they were low key, with evening wear being replaced by suits and day dresses or, where appropriate, military uniform.

The famous statuette of the knight holding a sword and standing on a film reel was designed in 1928 and has remained the same design ever since. The statuettes are cast in solid bronze and finished with gold plating. An Oscar stands at just over 34 cm tall and is a weighty 3.8 kgs.

The story about how the Oscar got its name has never been confirmed, but the legend has it that the Academy librarian said she thought it looked like her Uncle Oscar, and the nickname stuck. In 1939, the Academy adopted Oscar as the official name of the statuette and the awards.

The Oscar ceremonies weren’t the only things toned down during the Second World War. The statuettes were also subject to wartime de-glitzing, and for three years they were made from plaster sprayed with bronze lacquer. After the war, all the plaster Oscars were replaced with the real thing - just as well because one actor accidentally decapitated his plaster Oscar while practising his golf swing!

For anyone wanting to relive the Oscars’ best (and worst) acceptance speeches, there is a speech database on the official Oscars website. From the low-key “Thank you very much everybody” from film editor Elmo Williams in 1953, to Sally Field proclaiming, “You like me, you really like me!” in 1984 which The Independent termed one of the worst Oscar acceptance speeches of all time.

It also includes excerpts from the longest-ever acceptance speech by Greer Garson in 1943, which came in at a yawn-inducing seven minutes. Maybe it’s not surprising that there’s now a cut-off of 45 seconds for acceptance speeches after which the speaker is drowned out by loud music.

Who can forget ‘that slap’ at last year’s ceremony? As a result, this year, organisers have introduced a crisis team and are training the team to handle any future incidents that might cause controversy at the Oscars. But this is by no means the first time drama has dogged the ceremony. Here are our favourite dramatic moments:

In the year 2000, a shipment containing all that year’s Oscar statuettes was stolen from a loading bay. A few days later the majority of them were found by chance in a dumpster by Willie Fulgear, an unemployed junk scavenger, who, as a thank you, was given two tickets for the ceremony as well as $50,000 from the shipping company.

Another Oscar theft had occurred in 1938. Alice Brady won the Best Actress in a Supporting Role award, but she was too ill to be at the ceremony. Her award was collected on her behalf by an unknown man who promptly disappeared before anyone realised something was wrong. The statuette was never found.

There have been two times when the wrong recipients have gone on stage to accept an Oscar only to find it had been a mistake. The most excruciating occurred in 2017 when it was announced that La La Land had won the Best Motion Picture award, only for the mistake to come to light during the acceptance speeches as it was revealed the Oscar had actually been won by Moonlight.

The first time this kind of mix up happened was back in 1934 when two Franks were up for Best Director - Frank Lloyd and Frank Capra. The award went to Frank Lloyd, but Frank Capra misheard the announcement and also went on stage. The mortified Capra said that going back to his chair was “the longest, saddest, most shattering walk in my life”.

In 1974, gay rights activist Robert Opel bared all by streaking across the Oscars stage behind the host David Niven. While Opel’s actions got a big laugh, Niven joked “isn’t it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is stripping off and showing his shortcomings”. A few years later it came to light that perhaps the streak and the consequent joke might not have been as unauthorised and surprising as they first appeared.

Who doesn’t love a bit of trivia? And you never know when random facts like these are going to pop up in a pub quiz. So here’s our favourite trivia about the Oscars:

The Best Picture winner that has the highest Rotten Tomatoes score is All About Eve, the 1950 film with an impressive tomatometer score of 99%.

The Best Picture winner that has the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score is The Broadway Melody of 1929, which has a deeply unimpressive tomatometer score of just 42%.

Four members of the Coppola family have won Oscars.

The most nominated director is Steven Spielberg, whose films have collectively received 146 nominations.

The producer Walt Disney is the person with the most Oscar wins. He received 22 awards and had a total of 59 nominations.

The actor with the most Oscar wins is Katharine Hepburn, with four wins out of 12 nominations.

The most nominated individual is the composer John Williams, who has been nominated 53 times and won five.

There are three films which tie for the most Oscar wins of all time: Ben-Hur, Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which each have 11 Oscars.

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3. How the Oscars Went Austere for World War II
4. Who has won the most Oscars of all time? Breaking down the award show's record-holders
5. 13 remarkable moments in the history of the Oscars
6. The Truth Behind the Infamous 2000 Oscar Heist
7. During WWII, the Only Men Getting Plastered for Oscar Night Were the Statuettes
8. The story behind the longest Oscars acceptance speech in history
9. Academy Museum of Motion Pictures