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The Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in the film industry. They are regarded as the most famous and prestigious awards in the entertainment industry. Given annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), the awards are an international recognition of excellence in cinematic achievements, as assessed by the Academy’s voting membership. The various category winners are awarded a copy of a golden statuette as a trophy, officially called the “Academy Award of Merit”, although more commonly referred to by its nickname, the “Oscar”. The statuette depicts a knight rendered in the Art Deco style.

Quick Facts: Awarded for, Country ...

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The award was originally sculpted by George Stanley from a design sketch by Cedric Gibbons. AMPAS first presented it in 1929 at a private dinner hosted by Douglas Fairbanks in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in what would become known as the 1st Academy Awards. The Academy Awards ceremony was first broadcast by radio in 1930 and was televised for the first time in 1953. It is the oldest worldwide entertainment awards ceremony and is now televised live worldwide. It is also the oldest of the four major annual American entertainment awards; its equivalents – the Emmy Awards for television, the Tony Awards for theater, and the Grammy Awards for music – are modeled after the Academy Awards. They are widely cited as the most famous and prestigious competitive awards in the field of entertainment.

The 92nd Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the best films of 2019, was held on February 9, 2020. As with the previous ceremony, there was no host. The ceremony was broadcast on ABC. It took place at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, California, for the 18th consecutive year. This ceremony marked the first time in Oscar history that more than three films had received ten or more nominations. A total of 3,140 Oscar statuettes have been awarded since its inception in 1929.

History

The first Academy Awards presentation was held on May 16, 1929, at a private dinner function at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with an audience of about 270 people.

The post-awards party was held at the Mayfair Hotel. The cost of guest tickets for that night’s ceremony was $5 ($74 in 2020 dollars). Fifteen statuettes were awarded, honoring artists, directors and other participants in the film-making industry of the time, for their works during the 1927–28 period. The ceremony ran for 15 minutes.

Winners were announced to media three months earlier. That was changed for the second ceremony in 1930. Since then, for the rest of the first decade, the results were given to newspapers for publication at 11:00 pm on the night of the awards. This method was used until 1940, when the Los Angeles Times announced the winners before the ceremony began; as a result, the Academy has, since 1941, used a sealed envelope to reveal the names of the winners.