Before Oscars and the red carpet: A look back at the first Academy Awards ceremony 96 years ago

The Oscars were the brainchild of Louis B. Mayer, an imposing, tyrannical and sometimes controversial figure who was right at the epicenter of the golden age of cinema. Mayer co-founded the giant Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios and in 1927, set up the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - at first not as a way to celebrate the industry’s achievements but to keep it on an even keel.

The Academy established to unionization

The post-war film industry in Hollywood was blighted by strikes and labor disputes and the Academy was created as a way of fighting off the unions while the awards ceremony itself was a tactic to appease producers and actors, and keep them in check.

“I found that the best way to handle [filmmakers] was to hang medals all over them. If I got them cups and awards, they’d kill themselves to produce what I wanted. That’s why the Academy Award was created” Mayer is quoted as saying in Scott Eyman’s definitive 2005 biography, Lion of Hollywood.

Mayer was also among the patrons who financed the 12-story hotel Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel situated on the Boulevard. The hotel opened in May 1927 and two years later, would host the first Academy awards.

The first Oscars

On Thursday May 16, 1929, the first awards were dished out at a dinner party for around 260-70 people held in the hotel’s Blossom Room. Douglas Fairbanks was in charge of presenting the 15 gold-plated statuettes to the winners - whose identities had already been leaked to the press months earlier.

The list of nominees was confirmed on February 2, 1929. The ceremony itself was brief, lasting little over a quarter of an hour. Emil Jannings was the first to be presented with an award, winning the Best Actor category for his performances in The Way of All Flesh and The Last Command.

Janet Gaynor picked up the Oscar for Best Actress (7th Heaven, Street Angel and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans) while Frank Borzage collected the award for Best Director: Drama (7th Heaven).

Special awards went to Warner Bros, for it’s ground-breaking movie The Jazz Singer - the first full-length motion picture to feature lip-synchronous singing/speech and synchronized recorded music, as well as Charlie Chaplin for acting, writing, directing and producing The Circus.

The 25th Academy Awards was the first Oscars ceremony to be televised - aired by NBC on March 19, 1953 and watched by an audience of 40 million viewers.

This year’s ceremony drew television viewing figures of 19.69 million in the United States across ABC and Hulu.

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