Oscar Awards Trivia

Hollywood’s Academy Awards, a.k.a. the Oscars, the Rolls Royce of world movie glamour and glitter, will be the 79th today.

The first awarding ceremony in 1929, two years after the founding of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, had 250 guests at the black-tie banquet at a Hollywood hotel. The first best actor, Emil Jannings (I couldn’t tell him from Adam, honest), was absent. He collected his award a day before he left for Germany, his home country.

This year, some 5,800 Academy members from the entertainment industry cast their votes of judgment on their peers to determine the Oscar winners.

A total of 2,524 Oscar statuettes have been given out since 1929, not counting today’s statuettes that will be bestowed on crying (mostly female) and blubbering (mostly male) awardees.

The award’s complete name is The Academy Award of Merit. The 34 cm-tall gold-plated bronze statuette weighing 3.85 kg was the work of Cedric Gibbons, the 1920s art director of MGM.  He designed a knight holding a crusader’s sword, standing on a reel of film with five spokes, each representing a sector of the film industry––writers, actors, directors, producers, and technicians.

Two stories are behind the Oscar name. A worker at the Academy’s library who later became the executive director had said that the statuette looked like her Uncle Oscar. Actress Bette Davis was also quoted to have said that it looked like her first husband named Oscar.  So Oscar became the Academy Awards’ nickname.

No change had been made on the statuette, though child awardees, like Shirley Temple in the 1930s, were given small Oscars. Walt Disney was given one normal-sized statuette and seven very tiny ones for his celebrated Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, while a wooden one with a movable mouth was given to a ventriloquist winner.  During World War II when metal was needed for arms manufacturing, awardees were given plaster statuettes, which they traded with the metal ones when the war was over. Today, as a policy all Oscar statuettes are of the same size and kind.

Jack Nicholson is the most nominated actor of all time with 12 nominations, followed by Sir Lawrence Olivier with 10 and Paul Newman with nine.  Olivier had four wins, Nicholson three, and Newman two.  For Best Actress, Katharine Hepburn matched both Nicholson with 12 nominations and Olivier with four wins.  Meryl Streep though outdid them with 14 nominations, though she came out with only two awards so far.

Marlon Brando is the second actor in history to refuse the Oscar (his second, for his role in The Godfather in 1973) to protest the treatment of Indians in US film and television.

Emceeing the Oscars is reckoned as a daunting solo gig not for the fainthearted.  This year’s host is first-timer Ellen DeGeneres, whose track record in other ceremonies is deemed attuned with the times and audience.  Oscar hosts of years past were undiminished favorite Billy Crystal, and Steve Martin, Whoopi Goldberg, David Letterman, Chevy Chase, Jack Lemmon, Johnny Carson, Frank Sinatra, Fred Astaire, and Jack Benny.  The late comedian Bob Hope hosted the most number of times, for 18 years.

Watching the Oscars is a break.  Female stars aren’t what they appear on films when they take a catwalk on the five-ton red carpet.  There’s no denying that I like looking at the gowns of stars who sparkle as they balance on five-inch heels. Heaven forgive my reaction if they trip. (Those gowns I’ll never get to wear anyway, unless I follow Jennifer Lopez’s gown and wear it while I clean the cat litter.)  But I go for the real treat itself, the fascinating and flawless main Oscar show.

I’m excited about this year’s Oscars because I’ve clipped entry forms from Dubai newspapers to guess the top winners. Prizes are TVs, each worth the cost of a car back home. (In lieu of gambling like lotto, Dubai is awash with expensive prizes for honest-to-goodness raffle draws throughout the year; a fine way to earn my living––joining something, not spending anything, losing nothing.)

Only one entry is allowed per participant, so I entered the names of other household members, including the husband who’s on a trip. If he wins (who knows?) and his name and face appear on the papers, I dare not imagine what he’d do to me.  I’ll thank the Oscars, though.

(2007)