This Sunday, March 27, a new edition of the Oscar Awards will be staged, one of the most anticipated events of the year, after an unusual ceremony in 2021 due to the pandemic. The Dolby Theater in Los Angeles It will be the venue that will receive nominees, presenters and guests at the great cinema gala.
And 94 years of existence have only added winners, nominees and curiosities. Here we introduce you to some of them.
- 1. The first awards ceremony took place on May 16, 1929, at a private dinner at the Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles in honor of film achievement from 1927 to 1928.
- 2. The artistic director of the American company Metro Goldwyn Meyer, Cedric Gibbons, was the author of the design of the Oscar statuette. For his part, George Stanley was commissioned to sculpt the figure for the first time based on Gibbons’ proposal in 1928.
- 3. Each statuette is made of bronze and plated with 24-carat gold, which gives it a value of US$500 and weighs about 3.85 kilograms. The Chicago-based company RS Owens starts making them a year before the show. The funny thing is that you can get them for the price of 1 dollar.
- 4. It is the oldest of the four annual American entertainment awards: the Tony (for theater, 1947), the Emmy (for television, 1949), and the Grammy (for music, 1959).
- 5. The name of the trophy is actually the Academy Award of Merit, but it is known as Oscar. There is a theory that a librarian and later executive director of the academy noticed that the statuette resembled the uncle of hers named after it. This nickname was not officially associated with the statuette until 1939.
- 6. In 1940, the Los Angeles Times broke the Academy’s code and published the names of all the winners before the ceremony. Following this, the organization introduced the tradition of the sealed envelope which is still practiced to this day.
- 7. The red carpet of the gala is made especially for the event. It measures some 152.4 meters and must be rolled out at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles days in advance to be vacuumed and then covered in protective plastic before being unveiled just hours before the ceremony.
- 8. The first time the Oscar ceremony was broadcast on television was in 1953 and on color television in 1966. It is currently seen in more than 200 countries.
- 9. Actor Bob Hope hosted the ceremony 19 times, making him the most frequent host in history.
- 10. The last to have the honor of being the host was Jimmy Kimmel, who was in charge of conducting the ceremony twice (2017 and 2018).
- 11. The Academy does not know how many statuettes are awarded at the Oscars until the envelopes with the winners of the night are opened. Although the number of categories is known, the possibility of a tie or that several will share the prize makes it impossible to determine in advance the exact number of golden figures to be awarded. Those trophies that are left over are kept in a vault until the following year’s gala.
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- 12. The youngest Oscar winner in history was Tatum O’Neal, who won the award for best supporting actress for “Paper moon” (1973) at just 10 years old.
- 13. The oldest acting winner is Anthony Hopkins, who was victorious in 2021 for best actor for “The father” at age 83.
- 14. Katharine Hepburn is the most awarded actress in the history of the Academy with four awards.
- 15. Daniel Day Lewis is the actor with the most Oscars: 1990, 2008 and 2013.
- 16. The most nominated actress is Meryl Streep, who has accumulated 17 considerations for best leading actress (the first in 1981 and the most recent in 2018), in addition to four others in the category of best supporting actress, which makes a total of 21. This also makes her the most named performer in the history of the Academy Awards.
- 17. While Jack Nicholson is the most nominated actor having received 12 throughout the history of the awards.
- 18. Walt Disney has the most Oscars of all time. In total, he has won 22 competitive awards and three honorary awards, out of a total of 59 nominations. It was considered every year between 1942 and 1963.
- 19. Actors Peter Finch (“Network”, 1976) and Heath Ledger (“The dark knight”, 2008) are the only actors to receive an Oscar posthumously.
- 20. After the 2002 ceremony, when the show ran for four hours and 23 minutes, the Academy enacted the 45-second rule. Therefore, speeches longer than this period are interrupted by the orchestra. The record for the shortest acceptance message is shared by renowned director Alfred Hitchcock and actor William Holden. They both simply said, “Thank you.” The longest goes to actress Greer Garson, who rambled for seven minutes when she won best supporting actress for “Mrs. Miniver” (1942).
- 21. Italy is the country with the most wins in the foreign language film category with 10 wins.
- 22. “Ben-Hur” (1959), “Titanic” (1997) and “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” (2003) are the most successful films in Oscar history. Each one won 11 statuettes and the last one took all the awards for which it was nominated.
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