A new book examines longtime myths about the Academy’s early goals and the statuette’s look and nickname.
However, Bruce Davis details the thought behind these things in his new book, “The Academy and the Award: The Coming of Age of Oscar and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.”
Davis, who was AMPAS’ executive director for 20 years, dispels some Oscar lore. No, neither Bette Davis nor the Academy’s Margaret Herrick came up with the nickname Oscar. No, Mexican actor Emilio Fernandez was not the model. Cedric Gibbons didn’t sketch out the design on the tablecloth at the Biltmore.
The Academy was the brainchild of MGM head Louis B. Mayer; Fred Beetson, Conrad Nagel and Fred Niblo were present at the birth in January 1927.
“Almost no one outside their industry was thinking of movies as an art form” and awards were on the back burner of the new organization. In a pre-guild Hollywood, there were lots of battles between creatives and money people, so the Academy declared itself the arbiter of labor disputes. Another high priority was to battle the constant threat of censorship and negative publicity.
Films had become a huge industry, with estimates that 100 million Americans visited theaters every week, at a time when the U.S. population was 120 million.
The idea of awards was raised at meetings, but everybody seemed to avoid it. It was too complicated: Who would vote? Who is eligible, how many categories and how many awards in each?
Darryl F. Zanuck, at the time a Warner chief, considered awards “a wasted effort” for AMPAS. Film exec Frank Woods countered that the trophies “would be coveted and would become a valuable distinction. … If there could be developed a real competition for quality in this business, it would certainly have some effect of improvement of the product.”
On Feb. 20, 1929, Variety ran a list of winners at the first Academy Awards on page 7.
Most other publications ignored them. The ceremony took place three months after the announcement.
MGM’s primo production designer, Cedric Gibbons, 37, was asked to design an award. People suggested a medal or loving cup, but Gibbons “asked them to raise their sights,” Davis writes. He offered them “a vision, a new concept for an award.”
Davis writes that “prior to Oscar, there were no awards that the public was on a first-name basis with.”
Columnist Sidney Skolsky claims to have originated the Oscar nickname, but Brazilian scholar Waldemar Dalenogare Neto found a press item referring to Oscar before Skolsky’s first mention. Bette Davis claimed she named it after her ex-husband, and longtime AMPAS employee Herrick said she coined it after her Uncle Oscar.
The nickname began to “seep out into the Hollywood community between 1930 and 1933,” writes Davis. Many in AMPAS felt “Oscar” was demeaning, but “by 1939, the organization had decided that the nickname was an asset rather than an impropriety.”
Gibbons won 11 of the statuettes that he designed and donated them all to the Academy.
