The first Academy Awards ceremony was actually a very small affair, held
in the Blossom Room at the Roosevelt Hotel on May 16, 1929.
Unlike it is now, the
awards were no secret, as the actual winners were made public three
months before the actual awards were handed out. The intent
was to present the actual statues, as well as certificates of
achievements to the runners up. The result was that most of the
nominees didn't bother to appear, but rather cabled their thanks.
Best Actor nominee, Charlie Chaplin, stayed back in New York, even
though he was also cited for the very first special award for
'versatility and genius'.
Best
Actor winner, Emil Jannings, was in Germany when the awards took place,
but he was in Hollywood prior to the event, where he took a moment to
pose with his award.
The ceremony was a
private dinner, open only to members of the Academy. Cary Grant
once explained why the Academy ceremonies of the thirties were held in
private. "There is something embarrassing about all these
wealthy people publicly congratulating each other. When it all
began, we kidded ourselves and said: 'All right, Freddie March, we know
you're making a million dollars. Now come on up and get your
little medal for it."
The original intent of
the awards was to quell grumbling among the various labor groups who
were unhappy with their compensation, and were beginning to talk about
forming unions. Louis B. Mayer, one of the founding members of the
Academy, and key figure in the first year, stated instead, that 'the
awards have a dual purpose. One is that we want to recognize fine
achievements, and the other is that we want to inspire those others to
give finer achievements tomorrow.'
Voting was a bit
confusing for people that first year. Of the nearly 1000 votes received
by the membership, many of the selections didn't qualify simply because
they were released prior to the official start date. The Academy
insisted that only films released between August 1, 1927 and July 31,
1928 could be considered, but members were selecting films from 1925 and
1926, including Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush, and Buster Keaton's The
General. Many ballots were sent back to the members to do over,
thus delaying the process even further.
Once the ballots were received,
a list of ten candidates 'with the most votes in each category was then
handed over to five boards of judges, one from each Academy branch, to
whittle down to a short list of three.' A board of judges was
selected to determine the winners and the runners up. The board
was surprised to learn at the last minute that they were being joined by
Louis B. Mayer, who claimed that he was on hand to 'supervise'.
The board originally
voted King Vidor's The Crowd to win the Artistic Quality of Production
Award, however, in the final hour, Louis B. Mayer protested the
decision, arguing instead for the F.W. Murnau film, Sunrise.
Mayer felt that selected an 'internationally respected artist' would
bring prestige to the Academy, and it would also prove that there was no
'collusion' between the Academy and Mayer, himself. Of course,
Mayer failed to mention that he detested his studio's film, The Crowd,
feeling that is was 'unglamorous' and that it went 'against the studio's
image'.
The ceremony itself
began with a demonstration of Western Electric's portable talking
projection system. Host, Douglas Fairbank's presented the Best
Picture to Wings
using the system. Talking films were a novelty that year, and The
Jazz Singer was the only talking film that was released during the
eligibility period. Board members excluded it from contention, but
honored it with a special award instead. Warner Brother's boss,
Darryl F. Zanuck accepted the award, and dedicated it to the late Sam
Warner, who he declared 'responsible for the successful usage of the
medium'.
The
dinner menu included jumbo squab perigeaux, lobster Eugenie, Los Angeles
salad, terrapin and fruit supreme. After dinner,
Fairbank's invited the winners up to the podium to deliver their
acceptance speeches, asking in advance, for winners to be brief.
Naturally they were not, and the evening was filled with gracious thanks
to the Academy. The evening concluded with a song by Al Jolson.
"Hollywood was
just one big family then," Janet Gaynor once said. "and
this was a bouquet - thrown to me, I think because I was new and because
they thought I had a certain freshness. It was nothing then like
it is now. My agent didn't call me up the next day with an offer
to double my salary. I didn't find a pile of scripts on my
door. Photographers weren't camped on my front lawn. I just
got up at 5a.m.
and drove off to the studio - as always."
