Academy Award for Best Picture (1920s) facts for kids
The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the most important awards given out each year. It's part of the Academy Awards, also known as the Oscars. These awards celebrate the best movies and the talented people who make them. The American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) gives out these special awards. Winning Best Picture means a movie is considered the very best film of the year!
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What is the Best Picture Oscar?
The Best Picture Oscar is the highest honor a movie can receive at the Academy Awards. It recognizes the overall best film produced in a specific year. This award goes to the producers of the movie, who are the people responsible for making the film happen, from getting the money to hiring the crew.
The First Best Picture Winners
The Academy Awards started a long time ago, celebrating movies from the very beginning of cinema. The first Best Picture award was given for movies made between 1927 and 1928. Back then, the award had a slightly different name.
Outstanding Picture: The First Winners
The first award for Best Picture was called "Outstanding Picture." It honored movies that truly stood out.
- 1927/28 Wings – Paramount Famous Lasky – Lucien Hubbard
- The Racket – Caddo, United Artists – Howard Hughes
- Seventh Heaven – Fox – William Fox
Wings was a silent movie about World War I pilots. It was a huge success and the first film to ever win the top Oscar!
- 1928/29 The Broadway Melody – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer – Harry Rapt
- Alibi – Feature Productions, United Artists – Roland West
- The Hollywood Revue of 1929 – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer – Harry Rapt
- In Old Arizona – Fox – Winfield Sheehan, studio head
- The Patriot – Paramount – Ernst Lubitsch
The Broadway Melody was a musical film and the first sound film to win Best Picture. This was a big moment for movies, as sound was just starting to become common in films.
Outstanding Production: A New Name
For the third Academy Awards, the name of the top award changed slightly to "Outstanding Production."
- 1929/30 All Quiet on the Western Front – Universal – Carl Laemmle Jr.
- The Big House – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer – Irving Thalberg
- Disraeli – Warner Bros. – Jack L. Warner with Darryl F. Zanuck
- The Divorcee – Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer – Robert Z. Leonard
- The Love Parade – Paramount – Ernst Lubitsch
All Quiet on the Western Front was a powerful anti-war film. It showed the harsh realities of war and is still considered a classic movie today.
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