…..Oscar statuette[edit]
Academy Award of Merit[edit]
The best known award is the Academy Award of Merit, more popularly known as the Oscar statuette.[11] Made of gold-plated bronze on a black metal base, it is 13.5 in (34.3 cm) tall, weighs 8.5 lb (3.856 kg), and depicts a knight rendered in Art Deco style holding a sword standing on a reel of film with five spokes. The five spokes represent the original branches of the Academy: Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers, and Technicians.[23]
Sculptor George Stanley (who also did the Muse Fountain at the Hollywood Bowl) sculpted Cedric Gibbons' design. The statuettes presented at the initial ceremonies were gold-plated solid bronze. Within a few years, the bronze was abandoned in favor of Britannia metal, a pewter-like alloy which is then plated in copper, nickel silver, and finally, 24-karat gold.[11] Due to a metal shortage during World War II, Oscars were made of painted plaster for three years. Following the war, the Academy invited recipients to redeem the plaster figures for gold-plated metal ones.[24] The only addition to the Oscar since it was created is a minor streamlining of the base. The original Oscar mold was cast in 1928 at the C.W. Shumway & Sons Foundry in Batavia, Illinois, which also contributed to casting the molds for the Vince Lombardi Trophy and Emmy Award statuettes. From 1983 to 2015,[25] approximately 50 Oscars in a tin alloy with gold plating were made each year in Chicago by Illinois manufacturer R.S. Owens & Company.[26] It would take between three and four weeks to manufacture 50 statuettes.[27] In 2016, the Academy returned to bronze as the core metal of the statuettes, handing manufacturing duties to Walden, New York-based Polich Tallix Fine Art Foundry, now owned and operated by UAP Urban Art Projects.[28][29] While based on a digital scan of an original 1929 Oscar, the statuettes retain their modern-era dimensions and black pedestal. Cast in liquid bronze from 3D-printed ceramic molds and polished, they are then electroplated in 24-karat gold by Brooklyn, New York–based Epner Technology. The time required to produce 50 such statuettes is roughly three months.[30] R.S. Owens is expected to continue producing other awards for the Academy and service existing Oscars that need replating.[31]
Naming[edit]
The Academy officially adopted the name "Oscar" for the trophies in 1939. However, the origin of the nickname is disputed.[32]
One biography of Bette Davis, who was a president of the Academy in 1941, claims she named the award after her first husband, band leader Harmon Oscar Nelson. A frequently mentioned originator is Margaret Herrick, the Academy executive director, who, when she first saw the award in 1931, said the statuette reminded her of "Uncle Oscar", a nickname for her cousin Oscar Pierce.[33]
Columnist Sidney Skolsky, who was present during Herrick's naming in 1931, wrote that "Employees have affectionately dubbed their famous statuette 'Oscar'."[34] The Academy credits Skolsky with "the first confirmed newspaper reference" to Oscar in his column on March 16, 1934, which was written about that year's 6th Academy Awards.[35] The 1934 awards appeared again in another early media mention of Oscar: a Time magazine story.[36] In the ceremonies that year, Walt Disney was the first person to use the term "Oscar" while giving an acceptance speech.[37]
Bruce Davis, in preparing a history of the awards for his book The Academy and the Award, found that the term "Oscar" had come from Eleanore Lilleberg, a secretary at the Academy when the award was first introduced, as she had been in charge of pre-ceremony handling of the awards. Davis found in an autobiography of Einar Lilleberg, Eleanore's brother, that Einar had referenced a Norwegian army veteran named Oscar the two knew in Chicago, who Einar described as having always "stood straight and tall."[38]
In 2021, Brazilian researcher Dr. Waldemar Dalenogare found what may have been the first public mention of the name "Oscar", in journalist Relman Morin's column "Cinematters" in the Los Angeles Evening Post-Record on December 5, 1933. As no award ceremony took place that year, Morin wrote: "What's happened to the annual Academy banquet? As a rule, the banquet and the awarding of 'Oscar,' the bronze statuette given for best performances, is all over long before this."[39][40][41]
Engraving[edit]
To prevent information identifying the Oscar winners from leaking ahead of the ceremony, Oscar statuettes presented at the ceremony have blank baseplates. Until 2010, winners returned their statuettes to the Academy and had to wait several weeks to have their names inscribed on their respective Oscars. Since 2010, winners have had the option of having engraved nameplates applied to their statuettes at an inscription-processing station at the Governor's Ball, a party held immediately after the Oscar ceremony. The R.S. Owens company has engraved nameplates made before the ceremony, bearing the name of every potential winner. The nameplates for the non-winning nominees are later recycled.[42][43]
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