Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Articles

Doris Day, Love Me or Leave Me Honorary Oscars Bypass Women Pt.1: Greta Garbo, Mary Pickford, Sophia Loren, Deborah Kerr Exceptions No, it wouldn’t. Even sticking only to the Academy’s Acting Branch‡, the ratio currently stands at 36 to 8, or about 4.5 to 1. Anyone who has ever read my posts here at Alt Film Guide knows that I both despise and fear political [...]

Mary Pickford At the 1936 Academy Awards ceremony, D.W. Griffith, by then a veteran with more than 500 shorts and features to his credit, became the first individual to win the equivalent of an Honorary Award for his body of work. Seventy-six years and 86 (my count*) body-of-work Oscar winners later — including last year’s James Earl Jones and Dick Smith — a mere nine [...]

The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s annual fundraising gala began in 1972. It first honoree was Charles Chaplin, returning to the United States after two decades in exile. Since then, the award has been renamed for Chaplin. That same year, Chaplin was saluted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with his second Honorary Oscar. The first such award for Chaplin had taken [...]

Orson Welles, Citizen Kane Elizabeth Taylor’s jewels have just fetched a record-setting $115 million. Chances are Orson Welles‘ Oscar for his 1941 classic Citizen Kane won’t be sold for even one hundredth of that amount next December 20. Still, Welles’ golden statuette is bound to its anonymous seller much more than the $1 price tag stipulated by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences [...]