Description
75 YEARS OF THE OSCARS-PART ONE
SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS OF ACADEMY AWARDS AND STILL GOING STRONG✯
A WARDS ABOUND in every professional field, particularly in the world of entertainment. The Oscar is the inspiration for them all-and because satellites can beam it around the world, the annual ceremony is watched by a global audience The golden Award – then known simply as “the statuette”-was first presented in 1929, and the first recipient was the actor Emil Jannings: unable to attend the inaugural ceremony, he was given his in advance to take home to Germany
The Oscar is properly called the Academy Award of Merit. The official story is that in 1934, Margaret Herrick, the Academy librarian and later its executive director, said the statuette designed by Cedric Gibbons reminded her of her Uncle Oscar. But this is just one of several versions of how it got its nickname.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) was founded in May 1927 as a non-profit professional organisation, and its Awards came two years later. Its huge collections of historic materials, held in t the Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills, are an unequalled reference resource and attract researchers from around the world. This two-part tribute to Oscar’s 75 years has been compiled from the Academy’s archives. Best Pictures are listed alphabetically, with commentaries by a team of prominent film writers.
60 Pages
75 YEARS OF THE OSCARS PART TWO
MARCH 23, 2003, is a and most coveted of entertainment consequential date in Oscar history. It is then that awards. The Academy, an elite group the 75th title will be added to the list of Best Pictures that began with the first annual Academy Awards in May 1929. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and then by invitation only, is often and Sciences was founded in 1927 with the highest motives to provide a young, vigorous and often over experiment, safety over daring. derided medium of popular entertainment with box-office success over modest art- collective responsibilities and laudable targets The Awards, inaugurated two years later, aimed to recognise those who had excelled in the art of about 6, writers slightly more. The film-making and to ensure that the public was rest are other creative and technical aware of their achievements.
The gold-plated bronze statuette, designed by own. Arguably, the resales represent MGMS top art director, Cedric Gibbons, acquired the name Oscar in the mid-1930s and is the senior by its nature established, conservative to which only a fraction of the Hollywood workforce is admitted, criticised for preferring orthodoxy house returns. Actors represent a quarter of the membership, directors groups, each of which votes for its the thinking of a fairly small coterie, and not exactly youthful in outlook. This accounts for why Citizen Kane went unhonoured in 1941, when the Best Picture was How Green Was My Valley, and why the overbearing Cecil B. DeMille trumped High Noon in 1952 with his ponderous The Greatest Show on Earth. Perhaps it explains why no science-fiction film has ever been chosen, and only one that approaches the horror genre (The Silenir of the Lambs), and why the Academy rarely honours comedies, westerns or musicals. Oscar films are often long and costly, more than half of the 74 so far exceeding the standard 100 to 120 minutes; Marty (1955) and Annie Hall (1977) are honourable exceptions at just over 90 minutes. Even so, in more years than not, the Academy gets it right. The Best Picture list, presented here alphabetically, embraces many of the finest films in the English language across three-quarters of a century.
60 Pages
2 magazines
All our magazines are the original first day copies. The photographs shown are the copy that is for sale. Used and lightly read in very good condition for age.
