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1927-28
Actor:
The original AMPAS (International Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - 'International' was soon dropped from the title) had only 36 members when the Academy was founded, at a dinner at Los Angeles' Ambassador Hotel on January 11, 1927. On May 11, 1927, a week after the state granted the Academy a charter as a non-profit organization, an official organizational banquet was held at the Biltmore Hotel. Of the 300 guests, 230 joined the Academy, each paying a $100 fee to join. The first awards ceremony/banquet, a black-tie dinner, was held in Hollywood (at the Roosevelt Hotel) on May 16, 1929 with guest tickets costing $5, to honor films made from the beginning of August 1927 to the end of July, 1928. There was no suspense to the announcement of winners in the five-minute ceremony - they had been named three months earlier. This first awards ceremony was the only time in Academy history that the event wasn't broadcast in some way. There were only twelve categories for the Academy's first merit awards:
The Academy Awards were born the same year that sound was born, and Warner Bros.' The Jazz Singer was honored with a Special Award (and only one nomination for Best Writing - Adaptation for Alfred Cohn) as the "pioneering outstanding talking picture, which has revolutionized the industry." The Academy ruled that The Jazz Singer was ineligible for competition for the Best Picture award, because it was thought that it would be unfair to let sound films compete with silents. Originally, the Academy planned to grant two 'Best Picture' (or Best Production) awards - and it did so in its first year. In the history of the awards, Wings and Sunrise are the only non-speaking 'Best Pictures' in Academy history:
Four of the five nominated films for Best Picture (all except The Racket) were from Paramount Pictures studios. The silent classic war film filmed in widescreen Magnascope, director William Wellman's and Paramount's Wings, was the official first winner of the Best Picture award as the "most outstanding motion picture production." The most expensive film of its time (at $2 million), it featured spectacular aerial footage (air battles, bombing raids and crashes) and state of the art visual effects in its story of two flying buddies who accidentally shot each other down. To provide continuity, the Academy now lists Wings as the "official" Best Picture of the first awards. That makes Wings the only silent picture to have won the Best Picture award. F. W. Murnau's exquisite Sunrise was awarded a comparable honor for being the 'Best Picture' in the category of "Artistic Quality of Production" (or "Unique and Artistic Picture"). [The category of "Unique and Artistic Picture" was abandoned by the Academy after the first year of the awards.] |
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One winner, and two runners-up were named in each category. In the first year of the awards, the term "Honorable Mention" was used in place of the term "Nominee." (However, the term nominee will be used in this summary.) Fifteen statuettes were awarded, all to men except for Janet Gaynor who won for Best Actress. For this year only, the Academy gave awards for multiple, rather than single achievements.
