Oscar Award/Academy Award

 

Oscar/ Academy Award( Motion -picture award)

Academy Award is full Academy Merit, by name Oscar, any open number of awards presented annually by the Academy of motion picture arts and sciences, located in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., to recognize achievement in the film industry.

What was first presented in 1929, Christina gold plated statuette commonly called Oscar. Are chosen from 24 categories.

The Academy also presents scientific and Technical awards special achievement awards, honorary awards Cheen assault humanitarian award, the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award( for excellence in producing), the Gordon E.Sawyer  award (for technological contribution), although these are not necessarily awarded annually.

The only member of the Academy of motion picture arts and sciences may nominate and vote for candidates for the Oscars.

The  Academy is divided into various branches of film production, and the means image award category is chosen by the member of the corresponding branch; thus, writers nominate writers, directors nominate directors, and so forth.

The entire academy membership nominates the for best picture and to determine the winner in most of the categories.

Most preset award in world cinema "Oscar" is given in a grand ceremony held each year in Kodak theatre of Hollywood(Los Angeles, USA) in the month of February.

Content

• History
• Oscar statuette
• Naming
• Engraving
• Ownership of Oscar statuettes
• Indian films nominated in Oscar

History

Academy was founded in 1927, the awards committee was only one of several that had been formed by the new organization.

In May 1928 The Academy approves the committee suggestion to present Academy Award of merit in 12 categories.

The first award covered films that had been released between August1, 1927 and July  31,1928. The awards were presented on May 16, 1929, in a ceremony at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

By the time of the 2nd annual awards ceremony, on April 3, 1930(honoring film from the second half of 1928 and from 1929), the number of categories was reduced to seven.

The Academy Award was first televised in the United State in 1953, and since 1969 they have been broadcast Internationally. By the last 20th century, the ceremony had become a major happening,  viewed by millions.

Notable hosts over the years included Bob Hope, Johnny Carson, and Billy Crystal. Red -Carpet interviews also become an integral part of the event, which much attention focused on the attendee ensembles.

Oscar statuette

The design for the awards statuette- a knight standing on a reel of film and holding a sword- is credited to Metro- Goldwyn- Mayer (MGM)  art director Cedric Gibbons. Sculptor chords and levers commissioned  to create the original statuette based on Gibbons's design

For many years statuette s for cast in bronze, with 24 karat gold plating. During World war II statuette are made up of plaster because of metal shortages. They are now made of gold plated Britannium.

The design, however, has remained unchanged with the exception of the pedestal base, the height of which was increased in 1945. The statuette stands 13.5 inches (34.3 cm)tall and weighs 8.5 pounds (3.8 kg))

 George Bernard Shaw is the only person to get the " Nobel Prize" (for literature in 1925) and "Oscar" (for best screenplay in 1938 )both.

Mother India  (Mehboob Khan's film) was the first Indian film to get the nomination in the ' Best foreign language film' category in 1957.

Mother India comes close to winning the Academy Award but lost to 'Night of Cabiria' by a single vote.

Bhanu Athaiyais is the first Indian to get Oscar for costume designing in Richard Attenborough's internationally acclaimed film "Gandhi".

Satyajit Rai was the first Indian to get the honorary Academy Award( Oscar lifetime achievement award) in 1992 for his outstanding contribution to the cinema.

Gulzar becomes the first Indian lyricist to receive an Academy Award for penning "Jai Ho" in 2009.

Rasul Pookutty received Academy Award in 2009 for "best sound mixing" in the film 'Slumdog Millionaire'

Naming

The Academy officially adopted the name "Oscar" for the trophies in 1939. However, the origin of the nickname is disputed.

One biography of Bette Davis, who was a president of the Academy in 1941, claims she named the award after her first husband, band leader Harmon Oscar Nelson. A frequently mentioned originator is Margaret Herrick, the Academy executive secretary, who, when she first saw the award in 1931, said the statuette reminded her of "Uncle Oscar", a nickname for her cousin Oscar Pierce.

Columnist Sidney Skolsky, who was present during Herrick's naming in 1931, wrote that "Employees have affectionately dubbed their famous statuette 'Oscar.'" The Academy credits Skolsky with "the first confirmed newspaper reference" to Oscar in his column on March 16, 1934, which was written about that year's 6th Academy Awards. The 1934 awards appeared again in another early media mention of Oscar: a Time magazine story. In the ceremonies that year, Walt Disney was the first to thank the Academy for his "Oscar" during his acceptance speech.

Engraving

To prevent information from identifying the Oscar winners from leaking ahead of the ceremony, Oscar statuettes presented at the ceremony have blank baseplates. Until 2010, winners returned their statuettes to the Academy and had to wait several weeks to have their names inscribed on their respective Oscars. Since 2010, winners have had the option of having engraved nameplates applied to their statuettes at an inscription-processing station at the Governor's Ball, a party held immediately after the Oscar ceremony. The R.S. Owens company has engraved nameplates made before the ceremony, bearing the name of every potential winner. The nameplates for the non-winning nominees are later recycled

Ownership of Oscar statuettes

Since 1950, the statuettes have been legally encumbered by the requirement that neither winners nor their heirs may sell the statuettes without first offering to sell them back to the Academy for US$1. If a winner refuses to agree to this stipulation, then the Academy keeps the statuette. Academy Awards not protected by this agreement have been sold in public auctions and private deals for six-figure sums. In December 2011, Orson Welles' 1941 Oscar for Citizen Kane (Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay) was put up for auction, after his heirs won a 2004 court decision contending that Welles did not sign any agreement to return the statue to the Academy. On December 20, 2011, it sold in an online auction for US$861,542 ($0.98 million today).In 1992, Harold Russell needed money for his wife's medical expenses. In a controversial decision, he consigned his 1946 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for The Best Years of Our Lives to Herman Darvick Autograph Auctions, and on August 6, 1992, in New York City, the Oscar sold to a private collector for $60,500 ($110,200 today). Since he won the award before 1950, he was not required to offer it to the Academy first. Russell defended his decision, saying, "I don't know why anybody would be critical. My wife's health is much more important than sentimental reasons. The movie will be here, even if Oscar isn't." Harold Russell is the only Academy Award-winning actor to ever successfully sell an Oscar

While Oscar is owned by the recipient, it is essentially not on the open market Michael Todd's grandson tried to sell Todd's Oscar statuette to a movie prop collector in 1989, but the Academy won the legal battle by getting a permanent injunction. Although some Oscar sales transactions have been successful, some buyers have subsequently returned the statuettes to the Academy, which keeps them in its treasury.

Indian films nominated in Oscar

Film/Year
• Mother India -     1957   
•  An Encounter with Faces-   1978
• Salaam Bombay  -   1988
• Lagaan      -               2001
• Little Terrorist-       2005

Scientific and Technical Awards

• Vanitha Rangaraju-     200
• Shavinderdeep Singh, Cottalango Leon-   2016
• Vikas Sathaye-      2018

*Question to Answer

 Name the actor, who won the Oscar Award 2020 in “Performance by an actor in a leading role” category.
(a) Antonio Banderas
(b) Leonardo DiCaprio
(c) Adam Driver
(d) Joaquin Phoenix
(e) Jonathan Pryce

Let me know in the comment section