Photoplay, Rudolph Valentino, and the Beginning of the Oscars By Contributor and Writer Lea Stans
During the 1910s, years before the start of that famous annual parade of tuxes and evening gowns known as the Oscars, the U.S. moviemaking industry was a more informal place–albeit a hardworking and highly competitive one. Silent era studios were cranking out shorts and features every month with the speed of a fine-tuned assembly line, receiving recognition mainly from their peers and–hopefully–those coveted box office dollars.
Although moviegoing was one of America’s most popular pastimes, formal award ceremonies for “the industry” wouldn’t pop up until the first Academy Awards was held in 1927 at Hollywood’s Roosevelt Hotel, just as the silent era itself was ending. However, this ceremony did have a few early precedents thanks to fan magazines and even thanks to the creative mind of Rudolph Valentino.
Funny as it may sound to us today, there used to be a time when movie actors were looked down upon as far less “legitimate” than stage actors. They would appear in films quietly, often as a way to supplement their income during the slower summer months in the days before theaters had air conditioning. The tide started changing in the early 1910s as film fans started getting curious about the faces they were seeing every week on the screen. What were their names? What were they like in person? And would they get to see more of them?
Early fan magazines like The Motion Picture Story Magazine and Photoplay obliged by providing portraits, interviews, and general bits of news about popular players like Florence Lawrence, Maurice Costello, and Florence Turner. Somewhere along the line, writers reasoned: why not have fans write in and vote for their favorite “photoplayers”? An early example is Motion Picture Story Magazine’s “Popular Player Contest” held in 1912. After hundreds of thousands of write-in votes, the big winners were Gilbert M. “Broncho Billy” Anderson, Francis X. Bushman, Mae Hotely, Dolores Cassinelli, and the #1 top pick, Maurice Costello. The magazine assured its readers: “The successful players have received their prizes, together with the poems, coupons, and letters of appreciation that were received by us.”
Subsequent contests grew more elaborate. In 1914 Motion Picture Magazine (rebranded from Motion Picture Story) announced the “Great Cast Contest” with a number of categories for different types of actors: leading man, leading woman, character man, “Old Lady,” villain, child, and more. It was described as “An Opportunity to Vote for All Your Favorites and Do Them All Justice.” Taking place over a period of several months, each new issue kept a running tally of the top players in each category. The magazine claimed that “the ballots placed end to end would reach for 15,000 miles, or over half-way around the earth.” Top winners included Charlie Chaplin, child actor Bobby Connelly, comedienne Mabel Normand, and surprisingly, the biggest winner of them all was the distinguished Mary Maurice, nicknamed the “Grand Old Lady of the Films.”
Another game-changer was introduced by Photoplay in 1921: the Photoplay Medal of Honor, to be awarded to the producer of the best picture of the year. The grand announcement explained: “War has its crosses, the exhibition its ribbons, the athlete his palm, and literature its Nobel prize. So far, there has been no distinctive commemoration of singular excellence in the field of the photoplay.” Like the popularity contests, the winning film would be chosen via write-in votes from eager readers. The first winner of the esteemed medal–an actual gold piece crafted by Tiffany & Co.--was the bittersweet drama Humoresque (1920). Subsequent medals would be given out to films such as Robin Hood (1922), The Big Parade (1925), and Seventh Heaven (1927).
If these democratically-chosen honors seem like a clear pathway to the future Academy Awards, none other than the “Great Lover” Rudolph Valentino himself also lent a hand. In 1925 he announced the creation of the Rudolph Valentino Medal for Screen Acting, to be awarded to an actor or actress for the best performance of the year. Everyone besides Valentino himself would be legible, and the winner would be chosen by polling critics from all the major newspapers and periodicals–a departure of the common practice of fan write-ins.
The first Valentino medal ceremony was held at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in the summer of 1925. The big winner was John Barrymore for his performance in Beau Brummel (1924). Many of Hollywood’s swanky set attended, including Marion Davies, Norma and Constance Talmadge, Jack Warner, and Ernst Lubitsch, to name a few. Sadly, it would be the only Valentino medal that the Great Lover would present, since he would pass away suddenly in 1926.
In January of 1927, producer Louis B. Mayer formed the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). Made up entirely of folks involved in the industry–directors, actors, producers, technicians–it was originally a kind of company union, and then branched out into different committees. One committee decided to focus on “Awards of Merit.” And thus it was that on May 16, 1929, an awards ceremony was held for the best films and performances of 1927-28 at the Blossom Room of Hollywood’s Roosevelt Hotel–the very first Academy Awards. Attended by 270 of the industry’s elite, it included a dinner and the ceremony itself was 15 minutes long. Tickets for Academy members were $5, around $88 in today’s money.
Today the Oscars is one of the most exclusive award ceremonies on the planet, where just being considered for a nomination is a lofty goal for any serious actor. Its humble predecessors, including the old fan polls of the silent era, are virtually forgotten, as are many of the hardworking men and women who received votes. But we can well imagine what a thrill it was for those performers to get that bit of recognition, coming exclusively from the people they cared about the most–the fans.
Lea Stans is a historian from Minnesota who runs the blog Silent-ology, covering the people, films, and culture of the silent film era. She has contributed to Silent Film Quarterly, The Keaton Chronicle, and Comique: The Classic Comedy Magazine and is also a regular columnist for Classic Movie Hub.
