The First Women To Win An Oscar.
The First Women To Win An Oscar: A blog about the first women to win an Academy Award.
The very first Academy Awards were held on May 16, 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, with a banquet and a live show. The ceremony was hosted by Douglas Fairbanks and William C. deMille. The first awards were presented in 15 categories, including Best Actor and Best Actress.
In the first year of the Academy Awards, Janet Gaynor (Seventh Heaven (1927)) was named Best Actress for her performances in three different films; Seventh Heaven (1927), Street Angel (1928) and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927). Louise Dresser was also nominated for her performance in A Ship Comes In (1928).
Frances Marion wrote the screenplay for The Big House (1930), based on her own play The Big Shot. She won an Academy Award for Best Original Story, which she shared with co-writer Waldemar Young. This made Frances Marion the very first woman ever to win an Oscar!
Women of the Silent Screen. http://www.oscar-winners.com/silent/
womenofthesilentscreen.com
A blog about the first women to win an Academy Award. The First Women To Win An Oscar: A blog about the first women to win an Academy Award.
Women of the Silent Screen
The First Women To Win An Oscar
Last week, we posted about the first women to be nominated for an Oscar. Now we’re taking it one step further: Who were the first women to win an Academy Award? And what were they awarded for?
Turns out, the first woman to win an Oscar was Janet Gaynor. She won Best Actress in 1928 (the 1st year of the Academy Awards) for her portrayal of Dorothy Vernon in Seventh Heaven, Julie Cavendish in Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and Mary Turner in Street Angel.
The first woman to win multiple Oscars was Luise Rainer. She won Best Actress in 1936 (8th year of the Academy Awards) for her portrayal of Anna Held in The Great Ziegfeld and Best Actress in 1937 (9th year of the Academy Awards) for her portrayal of O-Lan in The Good Earth.
The first African American woman to win an Oscar was Hattie McDaniel. She won Best Supporting Actress in 1940 (12th year of the Academy Awards) for her portrayal of Mammy in Gone With the Wind.
The first woman to win two consecutive Oscars was Olivia DeHavilland. She won Best Supporting Actress in 1946 (18th year of the Academy Awards) for her portrayal of Melanie Hamilton Wil
The first woman to win an Academy Award was Janet Gaynor, who won Best Actress in 1929 for her roles in Seventh Heaven, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and Street Angel. She won a miniature statue, one-fifth the size of the regular Oscar statuette, as it was deemed inappropriate for a woman to receive a full-sized statuette.
The following year, in 1930, Mary Pickford became the first female recipient of a regular-sized Oscar for Coquette. It would be another 16 years before another female actor would take home an award — she was Luise Rainer, who won Best Actress in 1936 for the movie The Great Ziegfeld.
The next year, 1937, saw Bette Davis become the second woman to win two Oscars (for Dangerous and Jezebel). Her second win was received with boos from the crowd.
In 1938, Vivien Leigh became the first actress to win an Oscar for portraying a character previously portrayed by another actress on film; she won Best Actress for her portrayal of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With The Wind, while in 1933, Laura Hope Crews played Scarlett O’Hara (and other characters) in the lavish prologue to David O. Selznick’s
The first woman to win an Oscar was Janet Gaynor for her performances in 7th Heaven, Street Angel and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. It was a split award for those three films of the 1927/28 season. This was the first year that the Academy Awards were held, but it was also the last time that this would ever happen. The following year, the rules were changed so that each actor could only be nominated once for one film.
Gaynor won the award in 1929 over Gloria Swanson, Louise Dresser and Ruth Chatterton, all of whom were also nominated for their performances in A Star Is Born. It is interesting to note that all four women who were nominated were in their 30’s (Gaynor and Dresser were 35, Chatterton was 37 and Swanson was 40) at the time they were nominated. Since then there has been a trend towards younger actors winning Oscars – with many of them winning while they are still in their 20’s!
The next woman to win an Oscar after Gaynor was Luise Rainer for her performance in The Good Earth. Rainer won Best Actress in 1938 over Ginger Rogers (for Stage Door), Greta Garbo (for Camille) and Bette Davis (for Jezebel).
The Academy Awards were first held in 1929, but no women received awards until 1934. The first woman to receive an Oscar was actress Janet Gaynor for her role in 7th Heaven. The film won 3 of the first 10 Oscars ever awarded.
In 1934, Fay Wray also received an Academy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Picture. She won the award for her role in One Night of Love.
Two years after Fay Wray won an Academy Award, Luise Rainer became the first female to win consecutive Oscars. She won her first award in 1937 for her performance as a prostitute in The Great Ziegfeld and her second one a year later for The Good Earth.
Joan Crawford was the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Actress in a comedy role. She did so for her performance in 1942’s comedy-drama film, “Mildred Pierce”.
In 1954, Grace Kelly became the second actress to win consecutive Oscars. She won her first award that year for “The Country Girl” and again the following year for “The Bridges at Toko-Ri”.
The Academy Awards, also known as the Oscars, are a set of awards given annually for excellence of cinematic achievements. The first Academy Awards ceremony was held on May 16, 1929 to honor films released in 1927 and 1928; at the time of this first ceremony, there were 270 people in the Academy. The awards are now seen by more than a billion people annually.
Each year, the Academy honors individuals in 24 categories. The categories are: Actor in a Leading Role, Actress in a Leading Role, Actor in a Supporting Role, Actress in a Supporting Role, Animated Feature Film, Art Direction (Set Decoration), Art Direction (Art Direction), Best Picture, Cinematography, Costume Design, Directing, Documentary Feature-Short Subject (two awards), Film Editing (two awards), Foreign Language Film (one award for the country), Makeup-Hairstyling (one award for both categories), Music-Original Score (two awards for two categories), Music-Original Song (one award for this category), Short Film-Animated and Live Action (two separate awards), Sound Editing and Sound Mixing (two separate awards).
Since the beginning of the awards ceremonies, several female actors have received nominations and won an Oscar. Take a look at the list below to
