The Governors Ball: Hollywood’s Glitziest Afterparty Turns 65

On March 12, once the curtain comes down on the 95th Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre, the must-stop afterparty will just be getting started for Oscar nominees — winners and losers alike. This year marks the 65th anniversary of the Governors Ball, but it wasn’t always a coveted invitation — or even a tradition. The first Academy Awards statuettes were handed out in 1929 at a banquet in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, but the annual banquet was discontinued during the war years and, by 1958, the ceremony had migrated farther down Hollywood Boulevard to the Pantages Theatre. This meant that once the show was over, the stars were left to fend for themselves. So that year, the Academy charged actor and future California senator George Murphy with chairing a post-Oscars dinner dance, which would take place at the Beverly Hilton hotel. Its venue has changed over the years, but with just two exceptions — it was canceled in 1968 because of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and in 2021 because of COVID-19 — the ball has gone on ever since.

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As they danced to the music of the Ray Anthony Band at the first Governors Ball on March 26, 1958, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward were the evening’s golden couple. The two had married that January, and their first film together, the steamy melodrama The Long, Hot Summer, had just been released. Earlier that evening Woodward had been awarded the best actress Oscar for the psychological drama The Three Faces of Eve — beating out such established stars as Deborah Kerr, Lana Turner and Elizabeth Taylor.

Leonardo DiCaprio, named best actor for wrestling a bear in The Revenant, joined that movie’s producer Arnon Milchan as Steven Spielberg took a selfie at the 2016 ball.

West Side Story‘s best supporting actor George Chakiris and supporting actress Rita Moreno cozied up with their matching Oscars at the 1962 ball.

A ticket to the inaugural Governors Ball cost just $15. This year, invite-only tickets to the ball are $1,500 each.

Samuel L. Jackson (below, right) congratulated Sidney Poitier, who received an honorary Academy Award at the 2002 Oscar ceremony, as Julia Roberts mingled nearby.

Liza Minnelli, who performed a duet of “There’s No Business Like Show Business” with Sammy Davis Jr. at the end of the 1984 Oscars, caught up with Michael Jackson.

Dudley Moore (below, right), who was one of the co-hosts of the 1983 Oscar show, with Jessica Lange, best supporting actress winner for Tootsie.

Gregory Peck and his wife, Veronique, celebrated his win as best actor for his turn as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird at the 1963 ball.

Forest Whitaker, best actor for The Last King of Scotland, and Jennifer Hudson, best supporting actress for Dreamgirls, showed off their trophies at the 2007 ball.

Pals Shirley MacLaine, nominated as best actress for Irma la Douce, and Debbie Reynolds, who presented the best documentary award, chatted it up at the 1964 ball.

In 2018, Kobe Bryant, who took home an Oscar for the best animated short, Dear Basketball, attended with his wife, Vanessa.

At the 1975 Ball, the Coppola family had reason to celebrate. Frances Ford Coppola won best picture, directing and adapted screenplay Oscars for The Godfather Part II; his father, Carmine, won an original score trophy; and his sister, Talia Shire, was nominated as supporting actress.

Ang Lee got his first taste of Oscar gold in 2001 when Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was named best foreign language film.

At the 1972 ball, Peter Bogdanovich, joined by his girlfriend and leading lady, Cybill Shepherd, kept up a good face even though he came up empty-handed for his two nominations (directing, adapted screenplay) for The Last Picture Show.

Gwyneth Paltrow, best actress winner for Shakespeare in Love, got a kiss from her father, director-producer Bruce Paltrow, at the 1999 ball.

Forest Whitaker, best actor for The Last King of Scotland, and Jennifer Hudson, best supporting actress for Dreamgirls, showed off their trophies at the 2007 ball.

At the first Governors Ball in 1958, Clark Gable sat back as he was joined by (from left) screenwriter/director and Academy president George Seaton, Venice Film Festival director Floris Luigi Ammannati and singer Bobbe Brox.

Because Oscar winners aren’t known until those telltale envelopes are opened at the ceremony, the winners, for many years, had to return the trophies that were handed out onstage to the Academy so that they could be engraved with their names, which often took a couple of weeks. But in 2010, the Academy sped up the process with an engraving station at the ball where the winners could relax, as Renée Zellweger did after her best actress win for Judy in 2020.

Celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck almost single-handedly saved the modern-day Governors Ball. By the late ’80s, the ball had fallen out of fashion. Some of the biggest stars were skipping the event and heading straight to legendary agent Irving “Swifty” Lazar’s Oscar party at Puck’s Spago, then located just above the Sunset Strip. After Lazar died in 1993, the Academy invited Puck — seen here previewing the menu for the 2015 bash — to join forces with them. In 1995, he brought his signature smoked salmon pizzas and chicken potpies to his first ball, that year at the exhibition hall adjoining the Shrine Auditorium. It lured the evening’s big winners like Tom Hanks and Jessica Lange.

Despite the heavy security at the ball, the best actress Oscar that Frances McDormand won in 2018 for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri went missing for a time after she set it down on a table. A photographer working for Wolfgang Puck noticed a man, Terry Bryant, holding the trophy and seemingly headed for the door. After security was alerted, Bryant, who claimed he was only posing with the gold statuette, was arrested by the Los Angeles Police Department and charged with grand theft. McDormand (pictured here with her son, Pedro) declined to press charges, though, and a year later, just before trial, the district attorney dropped the case.

This story first appeared in the March 8 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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