kids encyclopedia robot

Academy Awards facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts
Quick facts for kids
Academy Awards
Academy Award trophy.png
The Academy Award statuette (the "Oscar")
Presented by Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Country United States
First awarded May 16, 1929; 95 years ago (1929-05-16)
Television coverage
Network List of broadcasters

The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are the best-known movie awards in the United States. The awards ceremony takes place each year in late February or early March in Hollywood, California.

The 1st Academy Awards were held in 1929 at a private dinner hosted by Douglas Fairbanks in The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The Academy Awards ceremony was first broadcast by radio in 1930 and was televised for the first time in 1953. It is the oldest worldwide entertainment awards ceremony and is now televised live worldwide. It is also the oldest of the four major annual American entertainment awards; its equivalents – the Emmy Awards for television, the Tony Awards for theater, and the Grammy Awards for music – are modeled after the Academy Awards. A total of 3,140 Oscar statuettes have been awarded since its inception in 1929.

Oscar statuette

Honorary Academy Award
Honorary Academy Award for Charlie Chaplin

The best known award is the Academy Award of Merit, more popularly known as the Oscar statuette. Made of gold-plated bronze on a black metal base, it is 13.5 in (34.3 cm) tall, weighs 8.5 lb (3.856 kg), and depicts a knight rendered in Art Deco style holding a sword standing on a reel of film with five spokes. The five spokes represent the original branches of the Academy: Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers, and Technicians.

Naming

The Academy officially adopted the name "Oscar" for the trophies in 1939. However, the origin of the nickname is disputed.

One biography of Bette Davis, who was a president of the Academy in 1941, claims she named the award after her first husband, band leader Harmon Oscar Nelson. A frequently mentioned originator is Margaret Herrick, the Academy executive director, who, when she first saw the award in 1931, said the statuette reminded her of "Uncle Oscar", a nickname for her cousin Oscar Pierce.

Awards ceremonies

Telecast

31st Acad Awards
31st Academy Awards Presentations,
Pantages Theatre, Hollywood, 1959
81st Academy Awards Ceremony
81st Academy Awards Presentations,
Dolby Theatre, Hollywood, 2009

The major awards are presented at a live televised ceremony, commonly in late February or early March following the relevant calendar year, and six weeks after the announcement of the nominees. It is the culmination of the film awards season, which usually begins during November or December of the previous year. This is an elaborate extravaganza, with the invited guests walking up the red carpet in the creations of the most prominent fashion designers of the day. Black tie dress is the most common outfit for men, although fashion may dictate not wearing a bow-tie, and musical performers sometimes do not adhere to this (the artists who recorded the nominees for Best Original Song quite often perform those songs live at the awards ceremony, and the fact that they are performing is often used to promote the television broadcast).

The Academy Awards is the world's longest-running awards show televised live from the U.S. to all time zones in North America and worldwide, and gathers billions of viewers elsewhere throughout the world.

After many years of being held on Mondays at 9:00 pm Eastern/6:00 p.m Pacific, since the 1999 ceremonies, it was moved to Sundays at 8:30 pm ET/5:30 pm PT.

In terms of broadcast length, the ceremony generally averages three and a half hours. The first Oscars, in 1929, lasted 15 minutes.

Categories

Laurence Olivier Joan Fontaine Rebecca
Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, stars of the film Rebecca which won Best Picture 1940
William Holden and Donna Reed hold their gold-plated Oscars, 1954
William Holden and Donna Reed hold their gold-plated Oscars 1954
Joan Fontaine and Gary Cooper
Joan Fontaine and Gary Cooper holding their Oscars at the Academy Awards after party 1942

Current Awards

Retired Awards

Records

Gone with the Wind from the year 1939 was the most successful film for a long time with ten Oscars. In 1960 the movie Ben-Hur won eleven Oscars. In 1998 Titanic also won eleven Oscars. Six years later, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won eleven Oscars.

The five categories best picture, best director, best actor, best actress and best Original Screenplay are the most important categories and they are called the Big Five. There are only three films that won all these categories: It Happened One Night, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Silence of the Lambs.

All About Eve and Titanic had 14 nominations. This is the nomination record.

The most successful filmworkers

Walt disney portrait right
Walt Disney won 26 Academy Awards

Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) has the most awards as a performer. She received 4 Oscars in the category best actress.

Meryl Streep has the most nominations as performers with 17 Oscar nomination. Jack Nicholson, Daniel Day-Lewis and Walter Brennan (1894–1974) have three Academy Awards amongst men.

Jack Nicholson also has a nomination record (12 nominations).

The person, who has the most Academy Awards is Walt Disney (1901–1966) with 26, including 4 Honorary Oscars and he has 37 nominations. He also won 4 awards in 1954, he received the most awards in one year.

The woman, who has the most Oscars is the costume designer Edith Head (1897–1981), she has 8 Oscars and 27 nominations. The people who have the most Oscars and are still living are the composer Alan Menken (8 Oscars) and Dennis Muren with 8 Oscars and the cartoon characters Tom and Jerry who have the most awards.

95th Academy Awards

95 Oscars
Official poster for 95th Academy Awards

The 95th Academy Awards took place on March 12, 2023, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. The awards honor films released in 2022.

The event was televised in the U.S. by ABC and was produced by Ricky Kirshner and Glenn Weiss. Weiss was also the director. Comedian and late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel hosted the show for the third time, after the 89th and 90th editions of the ceremony in 2017 and 2018.

Everything Everywhere All at Once won seven awards, including Best Picture; Everything Everywhere All at Once also had eleven nominations, the most of the ceremony. Other winners included All Quiet on the Western Front with four awards and The Whale with two. Avatar: The Way of Water, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, The Elephant Whisperers, Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, An Irish Goodbye, Navalny, Top Gun: Maverick and Women Talking each won with one.

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: Premios Óscar para niños

kids search engine
Academy Awards Facts for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia.