The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded in the late 1920s—at the exact second, some might say—that Hollywood figured out it needed more than glitz and glamour to survive. The film industry was already a national juggernaut in the making, but it was also a rickety workplace rife with fractious crafts, burgeoning unions, and studios scrambling to control production, wages, and image. Out of that pressure cooker emerged an idea that would prove both utilitarian and symbolic: Create an organization that could corral the industry's top talent under one roof, smooth labor friction, inculcate "standards" of craft and—crucially—give motion pictures the kind of institutional prestige that was enjoyed by older arts.
By Allan R. Ellenberger
The individual most often credited with the original initiative is Louis B. Mayer of MGM, who recognized that Hollywood needed a central organization that could serve as both mediator and mirror, a body that could quietly resolve disputes and project the industry to the world as a serious cultural power. In 1927 Mayer and his allies gathered a small group of moguls, producers, directors, writers and actors, and from this nucleus the Academy was created. It was incorporated that same year, and from the beginning it was set up as a professional society with "branches" representing the core disciplines: actors, directors, writers, producers, and technicians—an architecture intended to suggest unity while preserving hierarchy.
The Academy’s first leadership signaled what it wanted to be. Douglas Fairbanks, then one of the most famous men on Earth, became the first president—handsome, charismatic, and publicly “above” the studio fray. The presence of stars gave the institution glamour; the presence of studio executives gave it leverage. From the outset, A.M.P.A.S. was not merely an awards body. It was a club, a council, a public-relations shield, and—in time—an archive of Hollywood’s own mythology.
The Oscars were not the first thing the Academy did, but they became the thing most people remember. The Academy Awards began as an internal industry honor — part morale booster, part marketing tool, part declaration that film deserved the same ceremonial respect as opera, literature and painting. The first awards banquet was held in 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, in a modest dinner format that seems almost quaint compared to today’s broadcast spectacle. Early winners were announced in advance. Categories were different, sometimes experimental. And the whole enterprise had an unmistakable whiff of the studio era’s careful stage-managing: honor excellence, yes — but also reinforce the idea of Hollywood as a disciplined, respectable institution.
Leaders in every branch of the Motion Picture Industry participated in the organization of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at a meeting in Hollywood approved by Will Hays, czar of filmdom. The organizers, one of the most notable groups of film celebrities ever brought together, are shown above. Left to right, standing: Cedric Gibbons, J.A. Ball, Carey Wilson, George Cohen, Edwin Loeb, Fred Beetson, Frank Lloyd, Roy Pomeroy, John Stahl, Harry Rapf. Seated: Louis B. Mayer, Conrad Nagel, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Frank Woods, M.C. Levee, Joseph M. Schenck and Fred Niblo.
Announcements of the formation of the Academy and its purpose, May 1927
As the 1930s wore on, the awards quickly became more than the sum of their parts. Radio contributed. Newspaper coverage contributed more. Then later, television turned the Oscars into an event that was seen around the world, an annual ritual in which Hollywood tells its own origin stories, enshrines its ideals, anoints its champions and, just as importantly, voices its anxieties. For decades now the Oscars have become a place where Hollywood argues with itself over what it most wants to be: artistically fearless but commercially triumphant, socially aware but emotionally traditional, global in reach but profoundly local in politics and taste. The Academy’s decisions—who gets nominated, who wins, what movies are “important”—have always been a form of cultural debate.
That argument begins with the nomination process itself. The Academy’s branch system shaped the DNA of Oscar history: craftspeople nominate within their own discipline, while final voting has traditionally been broader across the membership (with some category-specific rules changing over time). In practice, this has meant that certain kinds of films—those with industry-wide visibility, studio backing, and strong campaigns—tend to rise, while quieter work can vanish. It has also meant that the Academy’s internal composition matters profoundly. The Oscars are not simply “what the world loved.” They are what this particular institution—at this particular time—chose to elevate. Whenever Hollywood changes, the Oscars change. Whenever the Oscars are criticized, the Academy eventually changes too, often slowly, sometimes dramatically.
The Academy’s physical footprint has shifted over the decades, and those moves tell their own story. The institution’s headquarters and offices have migrated through Los Angeles as the industry itself moved—between Hollywood, the studio corridors, and the administrative centers of the city. But the Academy’s most meaningful “location” isn’t merely an address; it’s an infrastructure of memory: its library, archives, and preservation arms, which quietly became some of the most significant cultural holdings in American film history.
At the heart of that memory is the Margaret Herrick Library, the Academy’s research jewel box—named for the Academy’s longtime librarian and later executive director. This is where Hollywood’s paper trail lives: production files, studio records, photographs, scrapbooks, pressbooks, personal papers, Academy governance material, and the documentary detritus that turns legend into traceable history. For researchers, the Herrick is less like a library and more like a time machine: it preserves the “why” behind the finished films—decisions, compromises, correspondence, and the daily mechanics of how pictures were actually made and sold.
The Academy's first office was on the second floor of the Mary P. Moll Building (Cinemart) at 6912 Hollywood Blvd.
One of the first Academy Awards
Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study
Parallel to the Herrick’s paper universe is the Academy’s commitment to film preservation and restoration. Over time, A.M.P.A.S. helped build a modern model for safeguarding cinema’s fragile originals—recognizing that celluloid is not immortal, that nitrate decomposes, that color fades, that soundtracks warp, and that “classic films” can disappear if nobody takes responsibility for their survival. This work gained institutional force through the Academy Film Archive and its partnerships, and through the Academy’s ability to convene studios, donors, and technologists around the unglamorous but essential work of keeping film history intact.
This two-fold identity—as awards show on one hand, as guardian of history on the other—accounts for the Academy's power as a cultural institution. The Oscars are its megaphone; the library and archive its long memory. One sets the news cycle, the other the terms of scholarship. One shifts and evolves; the other keeps what would otherwise be lost.
In the twenty-first century, the Academy expanded its public-facing role in a way that feels like the logical conclusion of its original mission: not just to honor the industry, but to define and exhibit film culture itself. That impulse ultimately culminated in the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles—an institution designed to bring the Academy’s holdings and curatorial authority into a permanent, walk-in narrative of cinema history. The museum did what the Oscars cannot: slow down. Contextualize. Show process. Put craft, technology, and labor beside glamour. Make space for critique as well as celebration.
Audience and critique have also become part of the Academy’s modern reality. For decades the Oscars had been periodically accused of being out of touch – too narrow in its taste, too slow to recognize new work and new talent, too reflective of studio power. In the 2010s these complaints sharpened into public pressure on the Academy to diversify, which became membership expansion on a scale previously unseen. For better or worse, these efforts served to highlight a simple truth: the Academy can only maintain its legitimacy by continuing to look like the industry it’s part of – and the audience it serves. The Oscars can only remain “the” film awards if the world sees the Academy as a credible mirror of cinema, not just a private club rewarding itself.
Academy Museum of Motion Pictures located on the Museum Row
Yet the Academy’s contradictions are also what make it fascinating. It was created in part to stabilize labor relations, yet it became the world’s most visible celebration of artistry. It began as an industry organization, yet it grew into a cultural authority. It has often been conservative in taste, yet it regularly crowns films that become symbols of social change. Its awards can feel subjective, even political, yet its archives are among the most objective anchors we have—hard evidence of Hollywood’s choices, habits, and blind spots.
In the end, the story of the Academy is the story of Hollywood trying to control its own narrative: to be art without giving up on commerce; to be modern without jettisoning the past; to honor innovation without forgetting legacy; to celebrate talent without losing its negotiating power. That’s why A.M.P.A.S. matters beyond Oscar night. It isn’t just the keeper of trophies. It is one of the major institutions through which Hollywood remembers itself—and the rest of the world is convinced to remember it the same way.
Endnote: Already, the race is on. In fact, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will reveal the nominations for this year’s Academy Awards tomorrow morning (setting the tone for the award season and reigniting the controversies about what — and who — Hollywood decides to honor).
What do you think the Academy has gotten right—and wrong—over the decades? Share your thoughts and reactions in the comments below.
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