The First Oscars Ceremony Lasted Just 15 Minutes
Tonight marks the 92nd edition of the Academy Awards. With nearly a century of history, the show has seen plenty of changes. It’s grown into Hollywood’s biggest awards show of the year, and a predictably outsized spectacle that typically stretches longer than three hours, even with the perennial promise of a quicker, streamlined show. Yet in its first incarnation, the Academy Awards ceremony was just 15 minutes long.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was established in 1927 by studio bigwigs banding together to promote their industry. Membership cost $100, made up mostly of producers and directors. It wasn’t until the next year that someone had the idea of giving out “'awards of merit for distinctive achievement.”
Today there’s an entire industry built around the Oscars, with studios spending millions conducting months-long campaigns to persuade the more than 8,000 Academy voters, all culminating in a gala event watched around the world. (Television broadcasts started in 1953.)
On May 16, 1929, though, the first Academy Awards ceremony was a more intimate affair. There were about 270 people in attendance, and everyone knew the winners ahead of time. They packed into the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel for a black-tie banquet; broiled chicken and fillet of sole were on the menu.
Most of the familiar categories existed even at that first event—best actor, best actress, and “outstanding picture” were handed out that day. But there was also a special category for “unique and artistic picture,” showing how even back then the moguls sought to recognize the distinction between art and more popular fare.
Today, of course, the Academy Awards are themselves a huge, popular production, stuffed to the brim with glamour and self-congratulation. And Hollywood wouldn’t have it any other way.
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