'I found that the best way to handle them was to hang medals all over them. If I got them cups and awards they'd kill themselves to produce what I wanted. That's why the Academy Award was created.' Louis B. Mayer

The Ceremony

The first Academy Awards ceremony, before the word Oscar was coined, was held in 1929 covering the 1927-28 season (the second was the same year covering 28-29). The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the awards connected to it, was created by Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM, as a way of curtailing the growing power of the various guilds, and at this first ceremony only 14 awards were handed out.

The Awards

Production

Which today we would call Best Picture and which was won by William Wellman's war film Wings . In truth Wings was probably not the best film produced that year but it was spectacular, and Wellman had done a remarkable job with the flying sequences. Right from the start the Academy would recognise popular spectacle over, for the want of a better word, 'better' films. Wings is the only silent film to win Best Picture, and seems likely to remain so.