16 remarkable moments in the history of the Oscars

The Academy Awards were first held in 1929, and each year the film industry awards gold-plated statuettes – commonly called Oscars – in a glittering and star-studded ceremony.

Officially the Academy Award of Merit, everyone knows the golden knight holding a sword and standing on a reel of film as Oscar. Cedric Gibbons, art director at movie studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, gets the credit for designing the statuette but not for naming it.

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There are three theories. Hollywood journalist Sidney Skolsky always maintained he thought it up as a less-grandiose antidote to the pretentiousness of the award ceremony. Meanwhile, actor Bette Davis claimed she once remarked the statuette’s backside resembled that of her husband, Harmon Oscar Nelson. The most likely winner, however, is Margaret Herrick, a librarian at the Academy, who said the knight (not just his rear) looked like her uncle Oscar.

But how much do you really know about the history of the awards themselves, and the dramatic moments that have played out on the biggest night of the Hollywood calendar?

The history of the Oscars: 16 key moments

1929: The first ceremony takes place

Founded by Louis B Mayer, head of MGM studios, in 1927, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was intended as a non-profit organisation with the goal of advancing the film industry. The first Academy Award ceremony took place two years later at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, on 16 May 1929. Tickets for the private dinner cost $5 and the presentation ceremony hosted by Douglas Fairbanks (actor and first president of the Academy) lasted just 15 minutes.

The film industry was undergoing a dramatic change at the time, with the revolutionary introduction of new sound technology. Although hugely popular ‘talkies’ such as The Jazz Singer (1927) had been released before the first Academy Awards, they were not considered, because it was seen as unfair to compare them to silent movies.

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The first-ever Academy Award was bestowed upon Emil Jannings, for Best Actor for his leading roles in silent films The Way of All Flesh (1927) and The Last Command (1928).

The first-ever Academy Award for Best Picture went to Wings, a 1927 silent movie that told the story of two pilots in love with the same woman. The film cost $2 million to produce, making it the most expensive movie of its time. Up until the release of The Artist in 2011, Wings was the only silent film to win Best Picture.

1934: The wrong Frank gets up on stage

Arguably one of the most awkward Academy Awards moments happened in 1934, when both Frank Lloyd and Frank Capra were nominated in the Best Director category.

Caught up in the excitement of the ceremony, Frank Capra heard Will Rogers, who presented the award, exclaim “Come on up and get it, Frank!” He duly ran up to the stage to claim his award, only to find that it was in fact Frank Lloyd who had won.

Capra called the journey back to his chair “the longest, saddest, most shattering walk in my life”, saying “I wished I could have crawled under the rug like a miserable worm. When I slumped in my chair I felt like one. All my friends at the table were crying”.

However, Capra’s humiliation didn’t last long: he won the Best Director gong the following year for It Happened One Night (1934).

1938: An imposter nabs an Academy Award

The Best Supporting Actress Award of 1938 went to Alice Brady for her role in In Old Chicago (1937). However, she was too ill to attend the ceremony. When her award was announced an unknown man took to the stage to collect it, apparently on her behalf. Before anyone realised something was wrong, the man had vanished. The mystery of the imposter’s identity – and what happened to Brady’s stolen statuette – was never solved.

Statuettes vanished again in 2000, when crates containing 55 Oscars disappeared from a loading bay. Some 52 of the statuettes were recovered soon after, found by citizen Willie Fulgear, who was rummaging in a bin behind a food store in LA’s Koreatown. According to The New York Times he was looking for boxes to use for an upcoming house move. Astonished by his unexpected discovery, Fulgear told reporters: “I’ve got more Oscars than any of the movie stars”.

Investigators believed that the culprits took the Oscars by accident, unaware of the crates’ contents.

1939: George Bernard Shaw becomes the first person to win an Oscar and a Nobel Prize

After winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925, Shaw received an Academy Award for adapting his 1913 stage play Pygmalion into a film script. He didn’t attend the ceremony, however, reportedly saying: “They might as well send some honour to George for being king of England.”

1940: Results are leaked ahead of the ceremony

At the first Academy Awards in 1929, the winners had been announced to the public three months previously. However, the following year the Academy decided to create a sense of suspense and instead sent an advanced list of award winners to newspapers, embargoed for publication until 11pm on the night of the Oscars ceremony.

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This system remained in place for the next 10 years. However, in 1940 the Los Angeles Times broke the embargo and announced the winners in their evening edition, meaning that nominees could find out their fate before turning up at the ceremony.

As a result of this fiasco, the following year (1941) the sealed envelope system was introduced and the results became a closely guarded secret.

1940: Hattie McDaniel becomes the first African-American Oscar winner

McDaniel made history in 1940 by winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, for her role as ‘Mammy’ in the 1939 Civil War epic Gone With the Wind.

However, in the year that McDaniel won, the Oscars ceremony was due to take place in a hotel that upheld a strict racial segregation policy. Film producer David O Selznick reportedly had to call in favours just to have McDaniel allowed into the building. Despite being the recipient of a major award, McDaniel had to sit at the back of the auditorium on a segregated table away from the rest of her co-stars.

McDaniel was also banned from attending Gone With the Wind’s Atlanta premiere because of segregation laws.

1943–45: Oscar statuettes are made of painted plaster

The Oscars statuette, which depicts a knight with a crusader’s sword standing on a reel of film, was designed by MGM’s chief art director Cedric Gibbons in 1929. In the early ceremonies the gongs were made from gold-plated solid bronze, which was later substituted for the pewter-like alloy Britannia metal.

However, as the Second World War raged, metal shortages meant that the awards had to be made from alternative materials. Consequently, all awards handed out between 1943 and 1945 were made of painted plaster. When the war was over, all recipients of plaster awards were invited to exchange them for metal ones.

1945: The first Academy Award comes in handy during the Second World War

Emil Jannings, winner of the first-ever Academy Award for his performances in silent films The Way of All Flesh and The Last Command (see 1929, above), was ruled out from the new Hollywood talkies because of his thick German accent.

Jannings therefore returned to Germany, where he became associated with Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda machine, starring in several films promoting Nazism. When the Allies stormed Berlin in 1945, Jannings reportedly carried his Oscar statuette around with him to win over American GIs and to demonstrate his former allegiance to the US.

1968: The ceremony is postponed

In 1968 the Academy decided to push back the ceremony from 8 April to 10 April following the assassination of Martin Luther King, whose funeral was scheduled for 9 April.

In 1981 the ceremony was postponed for 24 hours following an assassination attempt on US president Ronald Reagan, and the 2021 event was also delayed by two months due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

1973: Marlon Brando’s Oscar is rejected by Sacheen Littlefeather

Marlon Brando famously refused his Best Actor award for his performance in The Godfather (1972) in protest of Hollywood’s portrayal of Native Americans. He did not attend the ceremony, instead sending Native American activist and actress Sacheen Littlefeather to make a speech in his place.

When Littlefeather explained Brando’s actions, the audience was clearly unsure how to react – some people cheered, others booed. A confused Roger Moore, who attempted to present the award, apparently took the statuette home with him after Sacheen Littlefeather refused to accept it.

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Brando was not the first person to have refused an Oscar: in 1936 Dudley Nichols rejected his Best Adapted Screenplay award for The Informer (1935) due to ongoing strike action by the Screen Writers Guild.

Later, after receiving a Best Actor nomination for his titular role in Patton in 1971, George C Scott informed the Academy that if he won he intended to refuse the award. Everyone was therefore very surprised to hear him announced as the winner. Goldie Hawn, who presented the award, exclaimed “Oh my god!” when she read the result.

Unsurprisingly, Scott did not attend the ceremony, which he reportedly dismissed as a “two-hour meat parade”.

1974: Tatum O’Neal becomes the youngest-ever Oscar winner

The 10-year-old received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Paper Moon (1973), in which she starred opposite her father, Ryan O’Neal. She accepted her award wearing a mini tuxedo and platform shoes.

1998: Titanic wins 11 Oscars

With 14 nominations and 11 wins, the blockbuster epic Titanic (1997) dominated the Academy Awards in 1998. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, it tells the tragic story of the passenger ship that sank on its maiden voyage in 1912.

Films with historical settings have long performed well at the Oscars, from 1931’s Best Picture winner All Quiet on the Western Front, through to recent films such as Lincoln (2012), 12 Years a Slave (2013) and Oppenheimer (2024).

Other notable historical films that have swept the boards include the 1959 Charlton Heston epic Ben-Hur (11 wins), 1996’s The English Patient (nine wins) and 1939 Civil War drama Gone With the Wind (eight wins).

Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Dances with Wolves (1990), Schindler’s List (1993) and Shakespeare in Love (1998) each took home seven awards.

2002: Halle Berry wins Best Actress – and makes history

In March 2002, Halle Berry won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the romantic drama Monster’s Ball. The film, in which Berry plays the widow of an executed death row prisoner, was critically acclaimed for its depiction of poverty and racism in the American South, with her emotionally charged performance earning most of the plaudits.

But the moment carried wider historical significance, too: Berry became the first African-American woman to win the award. The importance of the achievement was not lost on the Ohio-born star, who tearfully dedicated the award to “every nameless, faceless woman of colour that now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened”.

But while Michelle Yeoh became the first Asian woman to win the Best Actress award in 2023, Berry remains the only African-American recipient.

2010: Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first woman to win Best Director

The 82nd Academy Awards saw Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker scooping six gongs, including Best Picture. But arguably the most significant accolade was that awarded to Kathryn Bigelow, who became the first woman to win the Best Director award.

There have been two further female recipients since then: Chloé Zhao for Nomadland (2021) and Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog (2022).

2017: La La Land is accidentally named Best Picture instead of Moonlight

At the 89th Academy Awards in 2017, romantic musical La La Land and coming-of-age drama Moonlight were in contention for the coveted Best Picture prize, with many commentators suggesting it was a two-horse race between the films.

It seemed settled, then, when the ceremony reached its climax and veteran actors Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway – who were presenting the award – opened an envelope apparently revealing that La La Land had been triumphant. The film’s cast and crew, including lead actors Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, made their way on stage to deliver their acceptance speeches and begin the celebrations.

Yet it transpired that Beatty had inadvertently been handed the envelope announcing Stone’s earlier Best Actress win, leaving Dunaway to read out the only film title visible on the card: La La Land. The actual Best Picture envelope – which revealed Moonlight as the true winner – was still in the hands of an accountant from PricewaterhouseCoopers, the firm that oversees the Oscars voting process.

Once the blunder became apparent, La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz halted the proceedings and held up the correct card showing that Moonlight had indeed won Best Picture, prompting the film’s stars to come forward and accept the accolade instead.

2022: Will Smith slaps Chris Rock

With the film industry returning to normal following the disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic, the 94th Academy Awards was always likely to be memorable – though not in the way most people expected.

Before presenting the award for Best Documentary Feature, comedian Chris Rock made an unscripted joke about Jada Pinkett Smith, who had shaved her head after being diagnosed with the autoimmune condition alopecia areata. Incensed, Pinkett Smith’s husband, Will Smith, strode onto the stage and slapped Rock across the face, before returning to his seat and shouting, “Keep my wife’s name out of your f******g mouth”.

The bizarre spectacle prompted speculation that the incident had been staged, but the slap was genuine – and the situation grew more awkward when Smith later returned to accept the award for Best Actor for his role in King Richard.

The rapper and former Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star is currently serving a 10-year ban from attending Academy Awards events, due to expire in 2032.

This article was first published by HistoryExtra in February 2016