As the 92nd Academy Awards wrap up a 3 1/2 hour worldwide broadcast and transition into endless recaps, reviews, and followup commentary, we take a quick look at a very different ceremony that took place for the 1st Academy Awards.
Back on May 16, 1929, two hundred seventy people paid $5 a piece to attend a celebration banquet at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Following a private dinner, “merit trophies” were handed out for work on films produced in 1927 and 1928; the award segment of the evening lasting a mere fifteen minutes, with winners having been notified, via telegram, three months prior. Unlike all ceremonies which followed, the 1st Academy Awards were not broadcast, nor recorded for posterity. The Los Angeles Times’ coverage of the event consisted of little more than the photo above and this brief recap.
The Academy Awards’ pageantry, public adulation, and media coverage would quickly escalate from these humble beginnings; which almost seems par for the course. The awards’ founder, Louis B. Mayer, later commented “I found that the best way to handle (filmmakers) was to hang medal all over them…That’s why the Academy Award was created.”
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