The Eighth Annual Academy Awards is held at Los Angeles’ Biltmore Hotel on March 5, 1936. The Master of Ceremonies is director Frank Capra who scored big in 1935, winning Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Actress for his romantic comedy, It Happened One Night starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert.
This year, Clark Gable also stars in the Best Picture winner, Mutiny on the Bounty.
This is also the year when the gold statuettes known as the “Academy Award of Merit” become more commonly referred to by their nickname, “Oscar.”
It isn’t until 1939 that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences “officially” adopts the nickname for the 13-and-one-half inch statue of a knight holding a crusader sword.
The origin of the nickname, although clouded, pre-dates the 1936 awards ceremony, Several recipients and media outlets refer to the statuettes as “Oscar” as early as 1934.
This is what the academy says about how “Oscar” got its name:
“While the origins of the moniker aren’t clear, a popular story has it that upon seeing the trophy for the first time, Academy librarian — and eventual executive director — Margaret Herrick remarked that it resembled her Uncle Oscar. The Academy didn’t adopt the nickname officially until 1939, but it was widely known enough by 1934 that Hollywood columnist Sidney Skolsky used it in a piece referring to Katharine Hepburn’s first Best Actress win.”
Skolsky says in his 1975 autobiography that he actually coined the name in the 1934 column the Academy references, partly because “statuette” is hard to spell and as a way to “erase their phony dignity” about the award. Skolsky says “Oscar” comes from an old vaudeville joke that begins, “Will you have a cigar, Oscar?”
Another theory is that MGM executive Louis B. Mayer’s secretary Eleanor Lilleberg, of Norwegian descent, says the statuette “looks like King Oscar II!” of Sweden. Walt Disney is said to have referred to his Academy Award for “Three Little Pigs” in 1934 as an “Oscar” in his acceptance speech.
Although most likely an “Oscar” creation myth, Bette Davis claims she invented the nickname because the statuette’s derriere reminded her of that of her then husband, musician Harmon Oscar Nelson. Says Davis in 1955:
“I am convinced that I was the first to give the statuette its name when I received one for my performance in Dangerous. I was married at that time to Harmon O. Nelson, Jr. For a long time I did not know what his middle name was. I found out one day that it was Oscar, and it seemed a very suitable nickname for the Academy statuette.”
Calling Davis’ claim into serious question is this excerpt from the March 26, 1934 issue of Time:
“In the cinema industry the small gold-washed statuettes which the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science annually awards for meritorious productions and performances are called ‘Oscars.’ ”
The 1936 “Oscars” also represent a first and last for the academy. It’s the first year a winner turns down an “Oscar.” Screenwriter Dudley Nichols refuses his Oscar for The Informer because he’s part of a boycott of the Academy Awards by actor, writer and director guilds trying to create their own independent unions.
It’s the second – and final year – the Academy allows write-in voting. A write-in campaign makes cinematographer Hal Mohr the only person in Oscar history to win a competitive Academy Award without being nominated for it. He’s honored for his work in A Midsummer’s Night Dream, whose cast includes Olivia de Havilland as Hermia, Mickey Rooney as Puck and Jimmy Cagney as Nick Bottom. Write-in ballots also make Sherry Shourds the only woman ever nominated for Best Assistant Director, a category created in 1933 and eliminated in 1937. Like Mohr, she is recognized for her work on A Midsummer’s Night Dream.
Two of the three nominated animated shorts are Walt Disney creations. His “Three Orphan Kittens” takes the Oscar.
TOP IMAGE: Movie Poster for “Mutiny on the Bounty” (1935). From the Wikimedia Commons.