SWC75
Bored Historian
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The Academy has apparently put all their Oscar telecasts on You-tube which gives a fan like me a chance to view some vintage ones. Prior to 1953, (the Oscars for 1952), they were given out at a banquet. Now it became a rather clunky but fun TV show. This was actually the 25th Academy Awards.
The first voice you hear, (you don't see him until the end of the last video in this 21 clip series), later became President- and I don't mean of the Academy. Bob Hope as he was so many times, (even before this, at the banquets), is the host and, while not all of his jokes hit the mark, he uses his humor to keep things light and keep them moving. He's not putting on a show of his own. And it does keep moving. There's little banter. There's no production numbers, just singers standing in front of a microphone. Almost all of the acceptance speeches consist simply of "Thank You". Nothing about their families. No list of names the audience never heard of. No pronouncements on the issues of the day. The dual broadcast from Hollywood and New York is clunky and was given up on after 1957. I think they did it primarily to show off their technology as coast-to coast broadcasting was quite an innovation in those days.
The one bad thing about this first televised ceremony is the large number of winners who didn't even show up for the ceremony. One of the surrogate recipients is John Wayne who accepts Gary Cooper's award. John would have to wait 17 years to get one of his own. And he hated High Noon, which he knew was an allegory for the blacklist, which he was highly in favor of. But you can't tell that from the good spirits he shows in accepting the award. The book "Inside Oscar" says that when n"The Greatest Show on Earth" is announced as the Best Picture winner over High Noon you can hear a voice saying, "Who decides these things, anyway?" but I was unable to hear it.
In a masterpiece of bad planning, there were no less than seven awards given out after the acting awards and best picture, (which were done in a group). The last is the Irving Thalberg Award to Cecil B. DeMille who says "I understand millions are watching on TV". He was wrong. NBC had stopped broadcasting the ceremony after the Best Picture award and went to something else.
The first voice you hear, (you don't see him until the end of the last video in this 21 clip series), later became President- and I don't mean of the Academy. Bob Hope as he was so many times, (even before this, at the banquets), is the host and, while not all of his jokes hit the mark, he uses his humor to keep things light and keep them moving. He's not putting on a show of his own. And it does keep moving. There's little banter. There's no production numbers, just singers standing in front of a microphone. Almost all of the acceptance speeches consist simply of "Thank You". Nothing about their families. No list of names the audience never heard of. No pronouncements on the issues of the day. The dual broadcast from Hollywood and New York is clunky and was given up on after 1957. I think they did it primarily to show off their technology as coast-to coast broadcasting was quite an innovation in those days.
The one bad thing about this first televised ceremony is the large number of winners who didn't even show up for the ceremony. One of the surrogate recipients is John Wayne who accepts Gary Cooper's award. John would have to wait 17 years to get one of his own. And he hated High Noon, which he knew was an allegory for the blacklist, which he was highly in favor of. But you can't tell that from the good spirits he shows in accepting the award. The book "Inside Oscar" says that when n"The Greatest Show on Earth" is announced as the Best Picture winner over High Noon you can hear a voice saying, "Who decides these things, anyway?" but I was unable to hear it.
In a masterpiece of bad planning, there were no less than seven awards given out after the acting awards and best picture, (which were done in a group). The last is the Irving Thalberg Award to Cecil B. DeMille who says "I understand millions are watching on TV". He was wrong. NBC had stopped broadcasting the ceremony after the Best Picture award and went to something else.
