Oscars: Useless but interesting facts about Hollywood’s Premier Awards Show

Wow your friends, impress your collegues, and shock yourself with your own vast knowledge of Oscar history, facts, trivia, and general useless information! Here’s the who did what, when and all those why’s you need to know about Oscar…..

Walt Disney has won more Oscars than anyone else. He was nominated for 64, and won 26
The actor or actress with the most Oscars is Katharine Hepburn, who starred in old-time classics like The Rainmaker and The African Queen. She won four best actress Oscars
The youngest ever Oscar winner is actress Tatum O’Neal who was 10 when she won best supporting actress for the film Paper Moon
Only three films have even won all top five Oscars – Best Film, Actor, Actress, Director and Writing. They are: It Happened One Night, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Silence of the Lambs
During World War II, the winners were given Oscar statues made of plaster instead of the usual golden ones, to mark the war effort
The most Oscars ever won by a single film is 11. That’s happened three times, with Ben Hur, Titanic and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
The Return of the King is the only film ever to have won every single Oscar it was nominated for.
The shortest Oscar ceremony in history was the first Oscars, in 1929. The awards portion of the evening lasted only about 15 minutes (shorter than some speeches take these days), since all the winners had been announced three months earlier.
The longest awards in history was the 2001 (ceremony in 2002) awards which lasted approximately 256 minutes, beating the previous record by about 16 minutes.
The First Film To Be Released On Video Before Winning Best Picture: The Silence Of The Lambs (1991)
The Only Television Film To Be Adapted Into A Best Picture Winning Film: Marty (1955)
The First Posthumous Oscar Winner: Sidney Howard, for the screenplay of Gone With The Wind (1939)
The Only Women Nominated As Best Director: Lina Wertmuller, Seven Beauties (1976), Jane Campion, The Piano (1994), Sophia Coppola, Lost in Translation (2003)
Until 1941, the Oscar results were made available to newspapers ahead of being announced at the ceremony so they could be included in the next day’s editions. Several nominees found out whether they had won by nipping to the press room during the show, so the procedure was abandoned in favour of the sealed envelopes.
The first colour film to win Best Picture was Gone With The Wind in 1940; the last black-and-white film to receive the award was Schindler’s List in 1994
Marlon Brando refused his Best Actor award for The Godfather in 1973 in protest against Hollywood’s treatment of Native Americans. He asked activist ‘Sacheen Littlefeather’ (an actress whose real name was Maria Cruz) to accept on his behalf. Littlefeather was booed, despite whittling her 15-page speech down to 45 seconds at the insistence of the organisers.
Two actors directed themselves to a Best Actor Oscar: Laurence Olivier for Hamlet in 1948 and Roberto Benigni for Life Is Beautiful in 1997.
In consecutive years, two actresses were nominated for playing the same character: in 1998 Kate Winslet and Gloria Stuart were both shortlisted for playing Rose in Titanic, while Dame Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett played Elizabeth I in 1999 (in Shakespeare In Love and Elizabeth respectively.
The 1974 ceremony was interrupted when one Robert Opal streaked across the stage. “Probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings,” quipped co-host David Niven. Five years later, Opal was murdered in his San Francisco sex shop during a robbery.
Only three films have won in every category they were nominated in: Gigi in 1959 and The Last Emperor in 1988, both picking up nine awards, and The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King, which went 11 for 11. The Turning Point and The Color Purple are the biggest losers, missing out on all 11 categories they were nominated in at the 1978 and 1986 ceremonies.
Four directors share the dubious honour of having been nominated for five Oscars without taking home a single trophy. They are Alfred Hitchcock, King Vidor, Robert Altman and Clarence Brown.
The ceremony was postponed three times: in 1938, because of flooding in Los Angeles; in 1968, after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.; and in 1981, after an attempt on the life of President Ronald Reagan.