The Academy Awards take place on February 22nd. This huge media spectacle is sometimes billed as a Super Bowl for movie lovers and it presents the public with a cavalcade of celebrities, fashions, and speeches. Adding to the fanfare, TCM will showcase Oscar-related films throughout the month and the Movie Morlocks will tackle a variety of Oscar topics to compliment the proceedings. To kick things off I’ve decided to dust off John Harkness’s The Academy Awards Handbook – “the only guide to the movies you will ever need!” (Really?!) – and share with you some highlights from the first ten years.

1927 – 1928: You still ain’t heard nothing yet.

“At the early awards, the Academy membership voted for nominees, and Academy’s Board of Governors decided the winners. The Board decided that it was unfair for the last silent films to compete with The Jazz Singer, so they ruled it ineligible and gave it a special award. The Board wanted to give the award for Artistic Production to The Crowd, but Louis B. Mayer came to the meeting and argued – exhaustingly – that the award should go to F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise…

Al Jolson began the long tradition of mocking the awards; ‘I notice they gave The Jazz Singer a statuette, but they didn’t give me one. I could use one. They look heavy and I need another paperweight.”

There were two winners for Best Production: The Last Command and Wings.

The Last Command is a fantastic film that fellow Morlock Jeff covered at a recent Telluride fest, see his review here:

http://moviemorlocks.com/2008/09/06/global-cinema-celebration-%E2%80%93-telluride-2008-wrapup/

Other films: Sunrise beat out Chang and The Crowd for Artistic Quality of Production. In the acting categories, Emil Jannings beat out Charles Chaplin and Richard Barthelmess, and Janet Gaynor beat out Louise Dresser and Gloria Swanson. Director Frank Borzage beat out Herbert Brenon and King Vidor. In the field of Comedy Direction Lewis Milesotone took honors over Charles Chapin and Ted Wilde.

1928 – 1929: Putting the cart behind the horse.

“Deciding that the best way to attract stars and attention to the Awards was not to name the winners until the awards banquet, The Academy began to create the Awards show as we know it.”

Winners: Broadway Melody (Production), Warner Baxter (Actor), Mary Pickford (Actress), Frank Lloyed (Director), Hans Kraly (Writing), Clyde DeVinna (Cinematography), Cedric Gibbons (Art Direction).

Categories that got discarded from previous year: Artistic Quality of Production, Comedy Direction, Title Writing, Engineering Effects Awards.

Of note: it took judges six months to decide the winners.

1929 – 1930: Dinner and dancing at the hotel.

“The 1929-30 Awards were held in a ballroom at the Ambassador Hotel, and the dinner and dancing came first… They also did not build to Best Picture the way they do today – they gave director first, sound recording and interior decoration second, cinematography and writing, then best picture, followed by the acting awards..”

Winners of the main categories were: All Quiet on the Western Front, for both Production and Director (Lewis Milestone). Acting kudos went to: George Arliss and Norma Shearer.

Norma Shearer wins an Oscar for The Divorcee, to which Joan Crawford says “What do you expect? She sleeps with the boss.” (Shearer was married to Irving Thalberg.)

1930 – 1931: They shoot dogs, don’t they?

“Norman Taurog was directing his nephew, Jackie Cooper, in a film called Skippy. Having trouble getting the proper emotional response, he told the ten-year-old that if he didn’t cry, the director would shoot his dog. The picture was a big hit, the young actor got a nomination and the director got the statuette.” I’m curious as to who we should credit with discovering method acting here, Taurog or Cooper? Certainly we know who to credit for child abuse.

Several modifications were made this year to the categories, including changing “Best Production” to “Best Picture.”

1931 – 1932: Shorts win big.

“For the first time, the Academy Awards were broadcast nationally on radio. So they decided that there would be no speeches. Of course, there were – Lionel Barrymore, for example, gave a speech on the integrity of the awards.”

This was also the year that awards were introduced for short films. But whereas today the shorts are given little attention in ’30′s Hollywood shorts were a big deal and awards were given to Disney and Laurel and Hardy – each wielding significant marquee clout.

1932 – 1933: Will Roger’s Folly.

“One of the most embarrassing moments in the history of the Awards occurred when master of ceremonies Will Rogers opened the envelope containing the names of the best director and said ‘Come and get it, Frank!’ without specifying which of the two nominated Franks (Capra and Lloyd) had won. Frank Capra was halfway to the podium when Rogers clarified that Frank Lloyd had won for Cavalcade.”

Of note: when Walt Disney’s acceptance speech for The Three Little Pigs marked the first time that the industry’s pet name for the statuette, Oscar, was publicly acknowledged.

1934: Capra’s Redemption.

“…Frank Capra recovered from his embarrassment of the previous year and It Happened One Night became the first picture to win Picture, Director, Screenplay and both acting awards. No film would duplicate that feat until One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, forty years later.”

Of note: Shirley Temple gets an Honorary Oscar.

1935: It’s a mess.

“Dudley Nichols refused his Oscar, which Capra sent him twice. For her part, Bette Davis took her Oscar and walked out on Warner Brothers, demanding better scripts before she returned to work… David Gould wins the Dance Direction Oscar for Folies Bergere over Busby Berkeley’s Lullaby of Broadway number from Gold Diggers of 1935, perhaps the greatest large scale dance number in Hollywood History.”

Given all the other crazy back-room politicking that was going on this year, the best Picture award to Mutiny on the Bounty was especially apropos.

1936: It’s a Frank, Frank world.

“For the first time, supporting actors and actresses were honored, but did not receive statuettes, but plaques. Frank Capra continued the ‘Frank’ domination of the director award, seven of the first ten Oscar Winners for direction were named Frank – Lloyd twice, Borzage twice, and Capra three times.”

1937:

Of note: the Irving C. Thalberg Memorial Award is created.

“History has not been kind to Thalberg, and he is best remembered as a purveyor of well upholstered and tasteful period dramas, often directed by Sidney Franklin, for the drivel which only a star of Garbo’s magnitude could transcend, and as the man who declawed the Marx Brothers and cut Erich Von Stroheim’s lost masterpiece, Greed, from eight hours to two and had the remaining footage rendered for its silver content. Given the fact that it is the Award bearing Thalberg’s name that goes to producers of long and honorable service, a half-sinister meaning accrues to the Oscar statuette – a man plunging a sword into a reel of film.”

Cut! Let us now allow that poetic and incisive description of Oscar to linger in our minds as I hit the clap-board and call it a wrap.