21 in all things Oscar-related, it doesn’t cover the important contribution made by international TV broadcasts to the success of the Oscars: a subject that VideoAge documented extensively in its May 2014 edition. On this particular subject, the book’s author, Bruce Davis (pictured above), a former executive director of the Academy, commented: “I am not exaggerating when I say that the analysis of Latin American Academy Awards coverage in your 2014 article is far and away the most thorough that I have ever encountered. As is mentioned [in my book], record keeping of that sort of information was often casual or nonexistent.” Davis joined the Academy’s general staff in 1981. He became the organization’s executive director in 1989, and retired in 2011. The 500page bookwas published by Brandeis University Press, and costs $40. The book takes 31 pages to describe the creation of the “statuette”, as the prize given out since the first ceremony in 1929, is called. But it took an additional 113 pages to finally touch on how the name “Oscar” came about, and 19 additional pages to figure out who Oscar actually resembled. According to Davis, “there have been three claimants to [the name Oscar].” The first one was Bette Davis, who said that the statue got its name from her husband, whose middle name was Oscar. However, Bruce Davis explained, people called her husband “Harmon” — not Oscar. Plus, the name Oscar “was used in print at least two years prior to the night when she [won the Award].” The second “claimant” was Margaret Herrick, then the Academy’s librarian, whose story became the Academy’s official account in 1948. The story goes that when Herrick saw the statuette in 1931, she noted that it reminded her of her uncle Oscar, a statement that was overheard by a journalist who promptly reported the tale. But Davis pokes holes in the story by stating that Herrick did not see the statuette in 1931, and that she did not have an uncle named Oscar. (Indeed Oscar was her second cousin.) The third claimant was gossip columnist Sidney Skolsky, who, in 1934, came up with the name Oscar because he couldn’t spell “statuette.” But Davis notes that when the Skolsky story came out “the industry was already calling [the statuette Oscar].” Davis notes that Skolsky was not even the first to call the In the book’s epilogue, the author touches on the declining number of viewers that flock to the Oscars on TV, explaining that the reason has to be the fact that “the Academy Awards has been hurting itself by doing its job: honoring the best movies each year... If box office is the criterion, we don’t need the Academy to do the selecting; we’ll just count dollars, not ballots.” Another missing element in Davis’ otherwise detailed and fascinating book, is, as indicated earlier, the role that international broadcasting has played in the success of the Oscars. Recalling the history of the Oscars’ international telecasts is not easy because, like much historical data concerning international distribution, the records were either never kept or have simply been lost over the years. What is known by VideoAge is that, from that first broadcast, it took 13 years (until 1966), before the show was telecast in color, and three more years before it was broadcast in a few more countries outside Canada and Mexico. As Davis points out, in 1953, the 25th annual Academy Awards ceremony was broadcast live in the U.S. and Canada on NBC. However, Davis did not report that in Mexico it was telecast the following night on Mexico City’s XHGCTV (now part of Televisa’s TV networks) via kinescope: film from a movie camera mounted in front of a TV monitor, that NBC uniquely called “kine-photo.” At that time this extra coverage was called “extending the network” by the Academy. VideoAge also reported that, according to an unnamed presenter at the 26th annual Awards, the show was also broadcast via kinescope in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, possibly on the station owned by Brazilian publisher and TV pioneer Assis Chateaubriand, who was a friend of David Sarnoff, president of RCA, parent company of NBC. Chateaubriand had purchased the transmitting equipment fromRCA. But it wasn’t until 1970 that Mexico and Brazil could air the live broadcast of the 42nd Awards. award an Oscar in print since it was used in a Los Angeles Post-Record “column from December 5, 1933, six weeks ahead of Skolsky’s [article].” Instead, Davis introduces the person that he considers to be the real creator of the Oscar nickname, Eleanore Lilleberg, a NorwegianAmerican who was the Academy’s secretary, and was responsible for the care of the statuettes. Oscar could have been a reference to the Norwegian king (very popular among Norwegians) or could have been, as Davis suggests, a friend of Eleanore’s, a Norwegian army veteran living in Chicago named Oscar. It takes until page 368 for Davis to mention the awards reaching a wide American audience. First, he had to cover other important Academy issues like the Foreign Language category, the Blacklist, and the Academy’s recurrent financial woes. The first national radiocast of the Awards was in 1939, but it didnot return tonational radio until 1942. The first filmed coverage (for the official historical record) was in 1949. Following the introduction of commercial television, also in 1949, the first sponsored telecast occurred in 1953 (on NBC) and was viewed on 20 million TV sets in the U.S. In its 2014 article, VideoAge reported that prior to 1953 the Awards were broadcast only on local Los Angeles TV stations, an element that was missing in Davis’ book, for a good reason. “I can answer your question about pre1953 local televising of the Oscars” he wrote to VideoAge. “The three shows just prior to the national broadcasts were filmed, and exist in the Academy’s archives, but they were never televised — even on local outlets. (There were local radio broadcasts on a local station.)” In his book, Davis noted that by 1957 one of the hosts of theOscars, DavidNiven, announced that the show was being watched by 100million people in the U.S. and Canada (where it was telecast). In 1960, the Oscars were assigned to the ABC TV network. It returned to NBC in 1971, but in 1976 the Oscars went back to ABC with a contract that lasted up to 2020 (but was eventually extended to 2028). (Continued from Cover) (Continued on Page 21) Bruce Davis next to the Oscar statue in 2016 Recalling the history of the Oscars’ international telecasts is not easy because the records were either never kept or have simply been lost. The Academy and Oscar January 2023
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