As Oscar fever heats up, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that it will attach each winner’s engraved nameplate onto their Oscar statuettes at the Governors Ball which immediately follows the ceremony on 7 March held at Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre.
At previous Oscar ceremonies, each winner would receive an unmarked Oscar and had to then go to the trouble of taking the trophies to the Academy to be personalised at a later stage.
Each engraved nameplate will include the winner’s name, the category, film title and year.
In a bit of Oscar nostalgia – the first ever Academy Awards of Merit were awarded way back in 1929 at a banquet at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The first telecast was in 1953 for NBC with Bob Hope as master of ceremonies.
Nobody is absolutely certain of how the much-desired Oscar statuette (a gold knight holding a crusader’s sword and standing on a reel of film) got his name. According to one bit of Hollywood folklore, actress Bette Davis, on accepting her first Academy Award in 1936, supposedly said the statue resembled her ex-husband, bandleader Harmon “Oscar’ Nelson. She noted that Oscar’s butt was particularly reminiscent of Nelson’s.
(Source: The Hollywood Reporter)
