100 Years of Movie Posters: Oscar Awards

Tuesday, 18 February 2014

Oscar Awards - Best Picture 1929-1969

The Academy Awards, commonly known as The Oscars, is an annual American awards ceremony honoring achievements in the film industry. Winners are awarded the statuette, officially the Academy Award of Merit, that is much better known by its nickname Oscar. The awards, first presented in 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, are overseen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS).

The awards ceremony was first televised in 1953 and is now seen live in more than 200 countries. The Oscars are also the oldest entertainment awards ceremony; its equivalents, the Emmy Awards for television, the Tony Awards for theatre, and the Grammy Awards for music and recording, are modeled after the Academy Awards.

Wings (1927) was the first movie to win Best Picture (at the 1929 Academy Awards) and the only silent film to win the award. Ben-Hur (1959), Titanic (1997) and The Lord of the Rings III Return of the King (2003) have won a record 11 Oscars each.

For the first ceremony, three films were nominated for the award. For the following three years, five films were nominated for the award. This was expanded to eight in 1933, to ten in 1934, and to twelve in 1935, before being dropped back to ten in 1937. In 1945 it was further reduced to five. This number remained until 2009, when the limit was raised to ten and later adjusted in 2011, to vary between five and ten.

The 86th Academy Awards will be held on March 2, 2014, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Wikipedia)