The first Academy Awards ceremony is held in Hollywood
On this day · 16 May 1929
Hollywood's first Oscars night handed out twelve statuettes in roughly fifteen minutes over dinner, with winners already known.
On May 16, 1929, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences staged its first awards ceremony in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. It was a private dinner, not a spectacle: about 270 guests paid $5 a seat, and AMPAS president Douglas Fairbanks handed out the trophies.
The whole presentation took roughly fifteen minutes — still the shortest in Academy history. There was little suspense, because the winners had been published three months earlier. The silent World War I drama Wings took Best Picture, the only fully silent film ever to do so.
Twelve awards, fifteen minutes, and not a single envelope to tear open.
German actor Emil Jannings won the first Best Actor and Janet Gaynor the first Best Actress. The ceremony went unbroadcast — radio coverage arrived the following year — making this quiet hotel banquet the humble origin of a night now watched by tens of millions worldwide.
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