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Sign up todayThe Academy and the Award
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Learn moreThe first behind-the-scenes history of the organization behind the Academy Awards
For all the near-fanatic attention brought each year to the Academy Awards, the organization that dispenses those awards—the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—has yet to be understood. To date, no one has ever produced a thorough account of the Academy’s birth and its awkward adolescence, and the few reports on those periods from outside have always had a glancing, cursory quality. Yet the story of the Academy’s creation and development is a critical piece of Hollywood’s history.
Now that story is finally being told. Bruce Davis, executive director of the Academy for over twenty years, was given unprecedented access to its archives, and the result is a revealing and compelling story of the men and women, famous and infamous, who shaped one of the best-known organizations in the world.
Davis writes about the Academy with as intimate a view of its workings, its awards, and its world-famous membership. Thorough and long overdue, The Academy and the Award fills a crucial gap in Hollywood history.
Bruce Davis joined the staff of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1981, after serving as chairperson of the theater department at Juniata College. He was the organization’s executive director for twenty years, overseeing the establishment of one of the world’s great film archives and finding handsome new quarters for the Academy’s Herrick Library. He has described his tenure as “thirty years among the masters of an art form.”
Jim Meskimen is an accomplished actor, impressionist, and voice artist whose work has been seen and heard for thirty years. He is a veteran of hundreds of TV and radio commercials for major clients, and he has appeared in many top TV shows and films. Jim's television appearances include the acclaimed British comedy-improv show Whose Line Is it, Anyway? as well as recurring roles on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, The Parkers, and the Parks and Recreation. As an impressionist, Jim's viral YouTube videos have entertained over two million viewers. His feature film debut was in Ron Howard's The Paper, and he went on to work on four subsequent films for Howard: the Oscar-nominated Apollo 13, The Grinch, Ed TV, and the Oscar-nominated Frost/Nixon. As a director of audiobooks, Jim has completed over five hundred hours of multicast audiobooks of the fiction work of L. Ron Hubbard for Galaxy Audio.
Reviews
“A tremendously in-depth history.”
“[Davis’s] academic background and years at the Academy made him the ideal writer for this invaluable book.”
“This engrossing behind-the-scenes look at…how the Hollywood machine works is explained in insightful and sometimes deliciously dishy detail.”
“Consistently colorful and often novelistic in its vivid scene-setting and descriptive detail.”
“How did the Oscar get its name?…Almost as intriguing are the sections about the extremely short presidential term of Bette Davis and an explanation of how the Oscar statuette was designed.”
“Film historians and others digging for a deeper vein of Oscar knowledge than mere trivia will turn up many nuggets in The Academy and the Award.”
“Not the usual breezy picture book, this is a meticulously researched and eye-opening account…Surprisingly this is only the first truly in-depth history.”
“Focuses on the organization’s formative years, ‘an early life that deserves a bildungsroman.’”
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