On this day in 1929 the first ever Academy Awards ceremony was held.
Here are the nominations for the most interesting and memorable Oscar stories. 👇🏾
The first movie ever to win Best Picture at the Oscars was Wings.
It was also the only silent movie to win Best Picture. Set during World War I, it contained stunning aerial views and plane battle sequences considered cutting edge for that time.
Did you know?
Wings was one the first movies in which two men are seen kissing on screen (not a full blown make out, that took more time). It was also among the first movies to portray nudity on screen.
Watch:
You might argue that The Artist, which won Best Picture in 2011 is also a silent movie.
Even though it was silent with no dialogues, it had music and sound effects with dialogues at the very end.
The first Oscars were a tame affair. Only 250-odd people attended the ceremony in the Blossom ballroom of the Hollywood Roosevelt hotel in LA.
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The only Oscar to ever win an Oscar was this guy. He didn't win just once, he had two of them.
Oscar Hammerstein II (yes, the same guy with Rodgers) won for Best Original Song.
The first win came for his song, "The last time I saw Paris" from Lady Be Good in 1940
Oscar (the musician, not the statue) was kind enough to admit that this song wasn't actually written for the movie but generally imported.
The second Oscar won by Oscar was for the song "It might as well be spring" from State Fair in 1945
The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King is the only movie to have won in every category it was nominated for. 11 on 11 including Best Picture in 2003.
17 years ago. Doesn't seem that long, does it?
The trilogy has aged well, just like you dear reader.
Two other movies also won 11 Oscars in addition to LoTR RoTK.
Titanic (in 1997) and Ben Hur (in 1959).
The only other sequel movie besides Lord of the Rings: Return of the King to win Best Picture was the Godfather II in 1974.
On the other side, two movies AJMed like nobody's business with 11 Oscar nominations and no wins to their credit.
The Turning Point (1977) and The Color Purple (1985)
You know about the youngest (Tatum O'Neal at 10 ) and the oldest (Christopher Plummer at 82) Oscar winners for acting.
The oldest in any category is James Ivory (yup, one half of Merchant-Ivory) at the age of 89 for "Call Me By Your Name" in 2018.
In 2013, two actresses made history as the youngest and oldest nominees ever for Best Actress.
Quvenzhané Wallis, 9 (Beasts of the Southern Wild) and Emmanuelle Riva, 85 (Amour).
The odds were ever in Jennifer Lawrence's favour as she won for Silver Linings Playbook.
Peter O'Toole was nominated for Best Actor 8 times. Didn't win.
He got an honorary Oscar in 2003 at the age of 70 and said "Always a bridesmaid, never a bride my foot! I have my very own Oscar now to be with me 'til death do us part."
The Oscar and O'Toole parted ways in 2013.
Richard Burton and Glenn Close came close to Peter O'Toole with seven Leading Actor Oscar nominations each.
Afsos, no wins.
Walt Disney was nominated for 59 Oscars and won 26 of them (four were honorary but the remaining twenty two were based on merit).
The Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco holds the largest collection of Oscars outside Hollywood.
More on Best Picture winners.
Marty (1955) was the shortest at 91 minutes, while Gone with the Wind (1940) at 232 minutes was the longest.
Remember this for the next time you complain about the length of Indian movies. Mind it!
You all remember the Moonlight / La La Land envelope fiasco. Not the first time in Oscar history.
In 1964, Sammy Davis Jr. was given the wrong envelope for Best Adaptation or Treatment score. Thankfully the winner he read out wasn't nominated. The mistake was soon corrected.
Oscar families. The first of two families with three generations of Oscar winners are the Coppolas.
Carmine Coppola in 1975 for Best Original Score, Godfather II
Francis Ford Coppola in 1971 for writing Patton
Sofia Coppola in 2003 for Best Screenplay, Lost in Translation
Second three generation Oscar family.
Walter Huston in 1948, Best Supporting Actor for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
John Huston in 1948 for Best Director for the same movie
Angelica Huston in 1985, Best Supporting Actress for Prizzi's Honor
Liza Minnelli, who won Best Actress in 1973 for Cabaret is the only person who has both parents also as Oscar winners.
Her mum, Judy Garland won an honorary Oscar in 1939 while her father, Vincente Minnelli, won Best Director for Gigi in 1959.
Oscar winner Renée Zellweger won her second Oscar for playing Oscar winner Judy Garland.
Major Oscarception right there.
Wait. That's not the first time that has happened.
Oscar winner Cate Blanchett won her second Oscar playing Oscar winner Katherine Hepburn.
Second Oscarception. Whew.
Kathryn Bigelow is the only woman to have won Best Director EVER for The Hurt Locker in 2009.
In addition to Bigelow, only four other women have ever been nominated for Best Director.
Lina Wertmuller (Seven Beauties, 1976)
Jane Campion (The Piano, 1993)
Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation, 2003)
Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird, 2017)
Nine other movies directed by women were nominated for Best Picture but the women did not receive Best Director nominations.
Six black men - nominated for Best Director Oscars but not yet won
John Singleton, "Boyz N the Hood" (1991)
Lee Daniels, "Precious" (2009)
Steve McQueen, "12 Years a Slave" (2013)
Barry Jenkins, "Moonlight" (2016)
Jordan Peele, "Get Out" (2017)
Spike Lee, "BlackKklansman" (2018)
You might remember #OscarsSoWhite - that's happened for a reason.
The Academy has promised to make changes in representation of genders and races among nominees and winners.
Hattie McDaniel was the first black winner - Best Supporting Actress for Gone With the Wind in 1940
The first black man to win an Oscar was Sidney Poitier (Best Actor, 1964 - Lilies of the Field) Halle Berry was the first black woman (Best Actress, 2002 - Monster's Ball)
No thread on Oscars is complete without referencing the legendary Meryl Streep who has received 21 nominations and won three awards.
1980 - Best Supporting Actress for Kramer v/s Kramer
1983 - Best Actress for Sophie's Choice
2012 - Best Actress for The Iron Lady
The final tweet on this glorious thread has to be the best opening sequence ever in an Oscar ceremony.
Hugh Jackman's INCREDIBLE opening sequence in a recession-downsized Oscar is the stuff dreams are made of.
Watch and enjoy the glorious Wolverine!
If you enjoyed the fun facts and stories, you will definitely enjoy our live quiz tomorrow at 3-45 PM IST.
A trip from Mysore to Bangalore is simply incomplete without indulging in the mouthwatering Maddur Vada in Maddur.
In 1938, the town of Shivapura in Maddur proudly hoisted the Indian national flag, leaving an indelible mark on India's freedom struggle!
A thread🧵
In 1938, The Indian National Congress held its session in Haripura village in Surat, Gujarat.
The session was presided by Netaji Subash Chandra Bose. At a time when hoisting the national flag was banned by the British, the Indian flag was hoisted at the Haripura session!
The Haripura Congress session where the tricolor was hoisted, inspired the Mysore leaders to hold a similar event!
But, the administration in Mysore got a whiff of these plans & banned public gathering. This did not stop leaders like Siddalingaiah & others
Arun Shourie once called the BJP government policies Congress plus Cow. During the first ever election in 1952, Congress had a pair of bullocks as its election symbol.
It is because of this lady from Tamil Nadu that the Congress Party has the hand as a symbol. 🧵
The very first elections took place in 1952. Given that the large portion of the population were illiterate, Sukumar Sen, India's first chief election commissioner decided on symbols to identify each party.
The congress party chose a pair of bullocks as its symbol.
Even during Nehru's time, there was a lot of dissatisfaction with the "Kamraj Plan". It required Congress Leaders to give up government posts, in order to strengthen the party.
K Kamraj realized that the party was losing its vigor and resigned from his post as CM of Madras to focus on rebuilding the party.
Jamnagar these days is famous for being the epicenter of Reliance industries and for welcoming the who's who of the world for a pre-wedding.
But in 1942, it played a significant role in saving over 1000 Polish children from certain death in WW2.
A thread 🧵
In 1939, Nazi Germany attacked Poland which started World War 2. Some Poles tried to escape the wrath of the Germans by moving into Soviet territory.
The Soviet authorities forced hundreds of thousands of Poles to migrate deeper into Soviet territory, including Siberia.
The invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany in 1941 prompted the USSR to declare an amnesty, resulting in the liberation of these Polish exiles. They were asked to find refuge themselves.
They embarked on arduous journeys to various destinations.
"Except for cricketers, poets, and singers, others found it relatively hard to come to India."
This was director John Mathew Matthan's rationale for portraying a ghazal singer as the villain!
25 years ago, crime drama changed forever with the release of Sarfarosh!
A Thread 🧵
John Matthew Matthan was an ad-film director, and "Sarfarosh" was his debut. But, he was an assistant to Govind Nihalani in Nihalani's first film "Aakrosh" and in "Gandhi," where Nihalani was the cinematographer!
He met Naseeruddin Shah on the sets of Aakrosh!
Aamir Khan's rationale to work with a debutant was as follows:
"When I read the script, I realized the social implications of what the film was trying to say (...) I reacted emotionally to it because of what I had been going through as an Indian, it talked of Hindus & Muslims living together."