The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers. The formal ceremony at which the awards are presented is one of the most prominent film award ceremonies in the world. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences itself was conceived by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio boss Louis B. Mayer.

The 1st Academy Awards ceremony was held on Thursday, May 16, 1929, at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood to honor outstanding film achievements of 1927 and 1928. It was hosted by actor Douglas Fairbanks and director William C. deMille.

The 81st Academy Awards honoring the best in film for 2008 was held on Sunday, February 22, 2009 at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood with actor Hugh Jackman hosting the ceremony for the first time.

Answered by Cool Me , an ibibo Citizen, at 12:16 AM on March 08, 2009

The first Academy Awards of Merit were presented in 1929, at a banquet held in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Two hundred and seventy guests paid $5 each to attend the event. Fifteen awards were given out that night; Wings won the award for best picture. Emil Jannings won the Best Actor award for The Way of All Flesh and The Last Command. Janet Gaynor was the only woman to receive an award that year, for Best Actress. She won for the cumulative work she had done in the previous year in Seventh Heaven, Sunrise and Street Angel.

In the early years, names of winners were published in the newspaper on the night of the ceremony. In 1940, when a Los Angeles paper published the names before the awards were even handed out, the system was changed. Starting the next year, awards were kept secret in sealed envelopes. The first telecast of the ceremony was made by NBC in 1953, with Bob Hope emceeing from Hollywood and Fredric March making presentations in New York.

Oscar nominees are selected and voted for by members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Aside from the industry awards, three special awards are given: the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for excellence in producing, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and the Gordon E. Sawyer Award for technological contributions.

Some Other Oscar Tidbits:


There are a few stories as to how the Oscar got its name:
The Academy librarian and executive director Margaret Herrick said that the statuette reminded her of her Uncle Oscar.
Bette Davis claimed she noted aloud the resemblance of Oscar's backside to that of her husband, Harmon Oscar Nelson.
The first documented mention of the name was in 1934, when columnist Sidney Skolsky referred to Katharine Hepburn's first Best Actress Oscar. He says he was tired of writing "the Golden Statue of the Academy," and fell back on the name Oscar from an old vaudeville joke he had heard.


The Oscar statuette is of a knight holding a crusader's sword, standing on a reel of film with five spokes, signifying the original branches of the Academy: Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers and Technicians.


The statuette weighs 8.5 lb/3.9 kg and is 13.5"/34.3 cm tall. It takes three to four weeks for a team of 12 to cast 50 statuettes. Each one is handled with white gloves.


So far, 2,622 Oscars have been awarded. Three winners refused their awards: screenwriter Dudley Nichols (1935, who refused his because he thought it would be politically incorrect to accept an Oscar at a time when the Writers Guild was on strike against the movie studios), and actors George C. Scott (1970) and Marlon Brando (1972).

Answered by Nisha , an ibibo Master, at 7:49 PM on March 03, 2009

Well, The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)[1] to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers. The formal ceremony at which the awards are presented is one of the most prominent film award ceremonies in the world. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences itself was conceived by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio boss Louis B. Mayer.

The 1st Academy Awards ceremony was held on Thursday, May 16, 1929, at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood to honor outstanding film achievements of 1927 and 1928. It was hosted by actor Douglas Fairbanks and director William C. deMille.

The 81st Academy Awards honoring the best in film for 2008 was held on Sunday, February 22, 2009 at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood with actor Hugh Jackman hosting the ceremony for the first time.[2]

The first awards were presented on May 16, 1929 at a private dinner in Hollywood, with an audience of less than 250 people.[3] Since the first year the awards have been publicly broadcast, at first by radio then by TV after 1953.[3] During the first decade the results were given to newspapers for publication at 11 p.m. on the night of the awards. This method was ruined when the Los Angeles Times announced the winners before the ceremony began; as a result the Academy has since used a sealed envelope to reveal the name of the winners.[4] Since 2002, the awards have been broadcast from the Kodak Theatre.[

For more details , Please visit the source site :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A cademy_Award#Voters

Answered by Alok Gupta , an ibibo Guru, at 5:10 PM on March 03, 2009

Every year since 1929, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has presented the Academy Award of Merit to honour outstanding achievements in motion-picture production. Designed by MGM art director Cedric Gibbons, the award takes the form of a statue of a knight holding a sword, standing on a reel of film with five spokes representing the original branches of AMPAS: actors, producers, directors, writers and technicians. Originally cast in bronze, the statuette is now made from 24-carat gold-plated brittanium alloy, stands 13-and-a-half inches high and weighs a surprisingly hefty eight-and-a-half pounds.

Answered by sanjay , an ibibo Guru, at 11:35 PM on March 02, 2009