March 11, 2024 – Oscars

Last night was the 96th Academy Awards, and unsurprisingly, Oppenheimer was the big winner. The Oscars are the oldest worldwide entertainment awards ceremony. The very first Academy Awards was held on May 16, 1929, at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. 15 statuettes were given out that night in front of an audience of 270 people. Winners were announced to the media 3 months before the ceremony, and the whole thing lasted just 15 minutes! The second ceremony in 1930 was the first to be broadcast on radio and it was first televised in 1953.
The official name of the statuette is the Academy Award of Merit. It’s made of gold-plated bronze, stands 13.5 inches tall, and weighs 8.5 pounds. It depicts a knight in Art Deco style, holding a sword and standing on a reel of film with 5 spokes to represent the original branches of the Academy – actors, directors, producers, writers, and technicians.
No one knows how the award became known as an Oscar. One popular theory is that Margaret Herrick (an Academy librarian in the 1930s and 40s and later executive director), saw the statuette and commented that it looked like her Uncle Oscar. The name stuck and Academy staff started referring to the award as Oscar.
Until 2010, Oscar winners had to return their statuettes to the Academy and wait several weeks to have their names inscribed on the award. But now winners have the option of having engraved nameplates put on their awards at the Governor’s Ball, a party held immediately after the ceremony.
The longest Oscar speech was given by actress Greer Garson at the 15th Academy Awards. She won Best Actress for the 1942 film Mrs. Miniver. Her speech was nearly 6 minutes long! After that, the Academy set 45 seconds as the limit for an acceptance speech and started to cut the winners off after their time was up.
The most awards won by a single film is 11, and 3 movies have that honor: Ben Hur, Titanic, and Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. The only actor to win an Oscar for playing a real Oscar winner is Cate Blanchett, who won Best Supporting Actress for portraying Katherine Hepburn in The Aviator. Meryl Streep has the most Oscar nominations with 21. Learn more here.