Hello and welcome. I’m sorry that I haven’t posted any blogs lately due to my hectic schedule. I promise that my awards-season coverage will be up-and-running in February. Now, to start things off, I’m sure that you’ve heard about the little controversy involving (the then-host) Kevin Hart back in December. He was announced as the host of the Oscars only to step down a day later when homophobic tweets resurfaced that he did not apologize for. Now I would generally stay out of this discussion because the story has received enough media attention, and have little relevant insight as a straight, white, male. But, long story short, we had a bunch of nothing coming in the way of news about what the Academy was going to do. Either everyone they asked said “No” - for the record, no one asked me - or the Academy wanted to move in a new direction. Nevertheless, the Academy decided to move on with no host.
But I have a question for you; Is it really a new direction or is it actually an old direction (or, as the Academy might put, a “senior direction” as the member's high-up in the Academy get offended when you use the term “old”)? Well, l want to take you back to early-Oscars history. The Oscars started on May 16, 1929, and the ceremony only lasted 16 minutes (you would be correct to assume that was the shortest ceremony on record). There was a host that year - action hero and president of the Academy, Douglas Fairbanks. I did an essay on him a couple years ago that you can reference if you want more information on him. The ceremony had a host every year until 1939. In case you’re interested, that ceremony lasted 2 hours and 6 minutes, and the best picture winner was You Can’t Take it With You. As for the way that they presented the awards that year, it is relatively unknown because there is barely any video or sound footage of the ceremony due to the fact that the Oscars wouldn’t be broadcast on national radio until two years later and television coverage wouldn’t start until 1953. As a result, all that we have from the early ceremonies were photos and the very rare newsreel footage.
The next thirty years they had a host, and Bob Hope hosted a large portion of those. From 1969 to 1971 the Oscars again went hostless and how they presented the awards, as you would suspect, was just having presenters. One interesting this was that in those years they introduced all the presenters at the beginning of the ceremonies. For the next several years, they had hosts because there were three or four hosts per ceremony. And then in 1989, they again went without a host. They did, however, have an opening number in ‘89 with Rob Lowe and Snow White which almost led to a lawsuit from Disney. This is ironic in that Disney would go on to buy ABC about 6 years later. Not surprisingly, a whole bunch of the audience members were horrified at what they saw. The next year that Academy had to do “damage control” by getting Billy Crystal to host for the first of what would be 9 times. There was a host from then until every year since...up to now.
Moving on to some other award shows, going hostless is not as uncommon as you may think. The Golden Globes went hostless for much of their existence because they thought that a host may ruin their laid-back atmosphere. They have, however, used a host every year since 2010. The SAG Awards didn’t have a host until last year. The Annies have not had a host for the last five years and the ceremony is probably better because of it. For one thing, it shortens the ceremony considerably which is good because it starts at 10:00 p.m. (my time). There are many other award shows that also don’t have hosts, but I would be here all night listing them all.
So, overall, I don’t think that going hostless is a problem for the Oscars at the least. Do I like a host for the Oscars? Yeah, as long as it’s not Franco and Hathaway. There are ways to make the ceremony entertaining without a host. Also, going hostless might make the Oscars a little shorter as well. So, as long as they don’t give Rob Lowe a musical number with Snow White again, I think that the show will probably be fine.
There is still time to vote in my end-of-the-year poll plus my run-off for last year. Details are in the “Events” section. Goodnight, and Bee Happy!™
Mr.Bee
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