10 Fun Facts about The Oscars
1. The first Academy Awards were held in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on May 16, 1929.
2. The price of guest tickets for the first Academy awards? $5.
3. The famous golden statuette is officially named the Academy Award of Merit. Origins of the nickname are unclear. The Academy didn't adopt the nickname Oscar officially until 1939.
4. An Oscar statuette is 13½ inches tall with a 5¼-inch base. It weighs 8 1/2 lbs.
5. Since 1929, 2,947 Oscar statuettes have been presented.
6. The design of the Oscar statuette, by Cedric Gibbons, is a knight holding a crusader's sword while standing on a film reel. The five spokes on the reel represent the five original branches of the Academy: writers, technicians, producers, actors and directors.
7. The first televised Oscars show was on March 19, 1953.
8. The length of the red carpet is about 500 feet. Thirty-three feet. wide That's 16,500 square feet.
10. To qualify for an Oscar a movie (other than in the foreign language category) must open in the previous year in Los Angeles County, Calif., with a run-time of more than 40 minutes.
11. There are more-than-5,000 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Among that group, more than 1,000 are actors.
More fun facts:
