Oscar History: The Very First Ceremony!
Tuesday, May 16, 2023 at 8:01AM
NATHANIEL R in 7th Heaven, Chang, Gloria Swanson, Janet Gaynor, Oscar Trivia, Oscars (20s), Sunrise, The Crowd, Wings, silent films

by Nathaniel R

THE FIRST OSCAR CEREMONY (photo from the Academy)

94 years ago today (May 16th, 1929) the very first Oscars were held in Hollywood. The newly formed Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was honoring the films released in the summer of 1927 through the summer of 1928 (a full year prior!). The ceremony, held at the Roosevelt Hotel (which was then about to turn two years old and is now the oldest continually operating hotel in Los Angeles) lasted just 15 minutes.  It would be the first and only fully “private” ceremony with the Oscars broadcasting by radio the following year. It would also be the first and only ceremony ever held in May with the Oscars moving to November the next season. Unusual yes. But only to these modern eyes. It would take the Academy a decade plus to settle into many of the traditions and categories that now seem to have always existed and even longer before the television-specific rituals began (in the early 50’s.)

Let’s look at what they chose in their inaugural year and where you can now screen those films...

 

BEST PICTURE, PRODUCTION

WINGS

 

BEST PICTURE, ARTISTIC PRODUCTION

CHANG: A DRAMA OF THE WILDERNESS

Famously there were two separate Best Picture prizes in the first year in a strange attempt to separate commerce from art (?) despite Hollywood famously making its gazillions on the sometimes volatile matrimony between the two. Strangely, only Wings is now considered a Best Picture winner though really shouldn’t Sunrise also be considered a winner? The other odd effect of this separation is its fruitlessness since both Sunrise and Wings are artful AND accessible.

Though Wings is now considered the big winner of that first ceremony, Sunrise and 7th Heaven tied for the biggest winner that night with three Oscars each.

 

BEST DIRECTOR, DRAMATIC PICTURE

7TH HEAVEN

BEST DIRECTOR, COMEDY

A crazy first year for Best Director with a ton of trivia notes of interest. In an messy possibly Globe influencing twist, the first year divided drama and comedy… but only for directors! And, in a follow up twist, neither of the directors of the two Best Picture winners were nominated. There's also discrepancy about whether or not Charles Chaplin should be considered a nominee for Best Director (Comedy) but more on that in a minute.

More trivia: King Vidor (aka the "best named director" of all time) suffered the first of five losses at the Oscars, stretching from 1928’s The Crowd through 1956’s War and Peace. Milestone and Borzage would both win second Oscars very quickly, with Milestone winning again for All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), and Borzage picking up another for The Bad Girl (1931). And if that weren’t points of interest enough the fifth nominee Ted Wilde, who had come up in the business writing for silent comic star Harold Lloyd, would die 7 months after the ceremony. He was just 40 years old. 

 

BEST ACTRESS

STREET ANGEL

BEST ACTOR

THE LAST COMMAND

In the first year of the Oscars the nomination could be for multiple films. Though IMDb strangely lists Richard Barthelemess as having two separate nominations for Best Actor that year and Emily Jannings only one (for two films), the truth is with the latter as both actors received a single nomination which cited two films.

More Trivia: Gloria Swanson would go on to become the first person in history to receive a consecutive acting nomination -- she would be up again for Lead Actress at the following ceremony for The Trespasser (1929). Janet Gaynor would also return but later with a nomination for A Star is Born (1937) but for the rest of these first lead acting nominees, it was 'one and done' in Oscar terms. 

It also surely stung Charles Farrell that he wasn't cited since he was Janet Gaynor's co-star in two of her three nominated performances (and they were romantically involved, too). Their pairing in 7th Heaven (released two summers before this ceremony) was so popular that they co-starred in a dozen films together between 1927 and 1934.

BEST ART DIRECTION


The Dove, based on a Broadway play, was about a man who framed another for murder due to a woman rejecting him (Norma Talmadge) and Tempest was a romantic drama about a Russian officer (John Barrymore) falling for a princess. Sadly The Dove is a "lost film" today though the Library of Congress has four of its nine reels. 

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

SUNRISE: A SONG OF TWO HUMANS

 

The cinematography award started strong with this beautiful silent. 

 

BEST WRITING, ADAPTATION


Glazer would win again for Arise My Love (1940)

 

BEST WRITING, ORIGINAL STORY

UNDERWORLD

Underworld was a crime drama about a gangster and his lawyer and the woman inbetween them. Ben Hecht would go on to become a regular nominee and the first writer to win two Oscars (The Scoundrel, 1935). His sixth and final nomination was the Hitchcock masterpiece Notorious (1946)

BEST WRITING, TITLE WRITING

 

BEST EFFECTS, ENGINEERING EFFECTS

The messiness concludes with even crazier inconsistencies. Best Title Writing (an immediately defunct category since sound films had already started blaring by the time of the first Oscar ceremony) while Best Effects, Engineering Effects both mixed nominees (without films cited) and nominees for specific film achievements. Effects was discontinued though some people (including Wikipedia) consider it the same as today's Best Visual Effects citation. 

 

HONORARY AWARD ★  The Circus, Charlie Chaplin

Here's another weird inconsistency in Oscar records. Some people (including Wikipedia) consider Charlie Chaplin a Best Actor nominee for The Circus but according to the Academy, he isn't because his name was removed from the competitive field when they decided to give him this Honorary instead. Perhaps the discrepancy is whether or not they first voted for him in competitive classes BEFORE deciding on this Honorary? From their official letter to Chaplin:

The Academy Board of Judges on merit awards for individual achievements in motion picture arts during the year ending August 1, 1928, unanimously decided that your name should be removed from the competitive classes, and that a special first award be conferred upon you for writing, acting, directing and producing The Circus. The collective accomplishments thus displayed place you in a class by yourself.

Now of course it's commonplace for movie stars to be multi-hyphenates (with numerous producing credits and occasional work in writing/directing, too) but in the early days of Hollywood this wasn't exactly the case.

At any rate it's all quite murky because voting rules were different and there's even discrepancy about who was actually determining the nominees and winners before the rules settled into place.

HONORARY AWARD ★  The Jazz Singer


 

Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
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