Ghosts of Ceremonies of Years Past
Sunday, March 6, 2016 at 9:00AM Manuel here. Love them (guilty!) or hate them (okay, sometimes I do), you have to admit that the Academy Awards are an institution, one with a long storied history. And while we've come down from last weekend's highs and lows and will soon wearily brace ourselves for what next year’s season might look like (first predictions April 1st as TFE does), whenever you need to scratch that Oscar itch take some time to look back on Oscar history before you start looking forward again.
Thankfully, the Academy is here to help. Finally embracing the 21st century they have slowly been building quite the digital archive over at oscars.org.
They now have video and photo highlights for ALL of their ceremonies. I’m sure Nathaniel and many others will cringe at the fact that they refer to this most recent ceremony as the “2016 Oscars” which as you know can sometimes get tricky. (This despite the Academy previously citing the film years (you can still see this at the tourist friendly Dolby Theater where each year the new Best Picture plaque goes up with the correct year noted (Spotlight is probably already up where the placeholder "2015" once was.)
Shouldn’t clicking 1950 give me access to the ceremony that awarded George Sanders his Best Supporting Actor win? It’s become common -- it's possibly IMDB's fault (and Jeopardy! now does it too possibly sabotaging Oscar purist trivia experts) to list by the ceremony year rather than the film year. We understand it (the 88th Academy Awards took place in 2016) but that doesn’t mean we have to like it; tying Spotlight to 2016 seems odd.
It’s a small quibble but trust that there’s a smorgasbord of images and videos to keep you entertained should you want to leave dissecting the 2015 2016 Oscars for another day. So take a look and help us find the best/most amazing/randomest photo from ceremonies past you can find.
Reader Comments (9)
I was actually trying to find Nathaniel's original post about the whole IMBD/Ceremony Year issue, so I could win an "argument" with my Dad last Sunday (as Nathaniel put it so much better than I could have) but had no luck :(
I read your warning, and I STILL hit the film year instead of the ceremony year, just because it's the way IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE!
Oh my! A new rabbit hole to plunge into. I jumped over quickly to see if they had the video of one of my favorite acceptance speeches, Jane Wyman's witty quip about winning for keeping her mouth shut for once and deciding to do it again, and not only found it but not the crappy snippet that's been floating around but a crisp clip of the entire segment with Ronald Colman listing the winners and than Jane's acceptance. I'll be lost in the site for days.
I just can't stand this thing of recent years. Traditional Oscar books like Robert Osborne's and Jiam Piazza's and Gail Kinn's refer to the Oscars by year of elegibility. So why change it?
I've been looking at the link and, just like joel6, I'll be lost in the site for days!
What called my attention looking and 1934 and 1935 is that they name Bette Davis and Paul Muni as regular nominees for Of Human Bondage and Black Fury, respectively. These two are write-in nominations, which were allowed for a few years. There's not even a footnote stating that they're not actual nominations. Curiously enough, the Academy's Database on the same website does make the clarification.
PS: Hal Mohr -Oscar for Best Cinematography of 1935 for A Midsummer Night's Dream- was the first and only write-in winner in Oscar history.
The Oscars year thing irritates me. And the Academy itself can't seem to make up its mind. On YouTube and on its digital archive it lists by year of ceremony; but in its database of winners and nominees, it uses year of eligibility. It should be the latter, and I'm sticking to it stubbornly. The 1973 Best Picture winner is The Sting, NOT The Godfather!
The digital archive is a nice thing, though. I've been checking out the rules of years past, which are very interesting. I wanted to know, for example, when they got rid of their rule stating that no director could be nominated in the director category twice in one year. Looks like they got rid of it for the 1975 Oscars (i.e. the 1975 year of eligibility!), which I'm guessing is a reaction to the previous year, when Coppola had The Conversation and The Godfather Part II in contention but was only be allowed to get nominated for one of them (when the Globes and the DGA nominated him twice).
Edward L: Herbert Ross directed two Best Picture nominated films in 1977: The Turning Point and The Goodbye Girl. He was nominated as Best Director only for The Turning Point. His spot was taken by veteran Fred Zinnemann for Julia.
Ha! Link added everyone!
But also, glad everyone else feels as strongly about years/ceremonies as I do!
Marcos: Yes, I know - but I'm not sure it was a rule that prevented Ross from getting two Directing nominations. Maybe he just didn't get enough votes to be nominated for both. I'll have to look at the rule book for that year. (Also, I would say that, strictly speaking, his unnominated spot for The Goodbye Girl was taken not by Zinnemann, whose film was nominated for Best Picture, but by Steven Spielberg, whose Close Encounters of the Third Kind wasn't but must have been close, given that it got eight nominations.)