The first Oscars lasted fifteen minutes and cost five dollars
In May 1929 about two hundred seventy guests gathered at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel for a private dinner that handed out fifteen statuettes. Tickets ran five dollars. Winners had already been told months earlier. That brief night launched what became the world's longest-running entertainment awards show.
The Academy Awards, nicknamed the Oscars, honor artistic and technical film work as judged by voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Categories of Merit are presented at a live Hollywood ceremony each February or March. The inaugural event on May 16, 1929, honored 1927–28 work, ran about fifteen minutes, and was followed by a party at the Mayfair Hotel. Guest tickets cost five dollars—roughly ninety-four dollars in 2025 dollars. Fifteen statuettes went to artists, directors, and other industry figures.
Secrecy arrived slowly. For the first night, media learned winners three months ahead. Through the rest of the 1930s, papers got results at eleven at night. After the Los Angeles Times printed names before the 1940 show began, sealed envelopes arrived in 1941. Emil Jannings, Best Actor for The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh, collected his prize early because he was returning to Europe, making him the first recipient. Early eligibility ran August to July; from the seventh Oscars onward it mostly followed the calendar year.
Best Foreign Language Film began as a special award at the twentieth ceremony and became competitive at the twenty-ninth; it is now Best International Feature Film. Best Animated Feature arrived at the seventy-fourth awards in 2002, won by Shrek. Since 1973, nearly every show has closed with Best Picture. In 2020 Parasite became the first foreign-language film to take that top prize. Network ratings have slid, glamour talk often drifts toward the Met Gala, and the broadcast is set to move to YouTube in 2029—yet the ceremony still marks a century of Hollywood self-judgment.
Source: Academy Awards
