The First “Oscar” Ceremony

The first Academy Award ceremony was held May 16, 1929, and was much different than the star-studded, dazzling event of today. Held in the Blossom Room of the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, the program consisted of an hour of dancing, a dinner, and then the awards ceremony. The 250 or so attendees paid $5 each for the night’s entertainment. The ballroom was decorated plainly with Chinese lanterns and candles and candy replicas of the Award of Merit on each table.
Unlike the present day ceremony, there was little pre- or post publicity for the affair. There was only brief mention of it in the newspapers, before and after, and it would be another year before the awards were first broadcast, and then only by a local Los Angeles radio station.
The rules and standards for determining winners were also different. Unlike today, nominees were not chosen from films of the previous calendar year. Instead they were chosen from the period of August 1, 1927, to July 31, 1928. The award for acting was based on “total work” rather than an individual movie and there were actually two best pictures and two best directors based on different categories. There was no suspenseful “and the envelope, please” moment, all the winners having been announced some three months earlier. There were only twelve categories represented, two special awards and no acceptance speeches. In fact, the entire award ceremony, emceed by Fairbanks and assisted by DeMille, lasted only fifteen minutes.