Golden Globe Awards | |
History of the Golden GlobesThe Golden Globe awards, the prestigious film and television honours that are awarded in a glittering ceremony every January, were one of the first truly international arts awards. They were conceived in the final years of the second world war by a group of foreign journalists based in Hollywood, California. In 1944 this group inaugurated an awards ceremony to celebrate the films that they had found to be the most interesting and worthwhile from the previous, dramatic, 12 months. The first awards ceremony by the group - the Hollywood Foreign Press Association - was a luncheon at the 20th Century Fox Studios and the first awards were actually scrolls. The following year the HPFA, a non-profit group, designed the now-familiar 'Golden Globe' award - a golden image of the globe encircled with a strip of motion picture film and mounted on a small pedestal. In that same year, 1945, they selected the Beverly Hills Hotel to host a dinner ceremony for the awards. The group's vision was for an annual award that would provide an impartial review of the year's motion pictures and their impact. From those humble origins the HFPA launched what has become one of the world's leading arts awards. In the early days the categories for awards were the core Best Motion Picture, Best Leading Actor/Actress, Best Supporting Actor/Actress, and a Director's Award. Then, as now, the awards were decided by a vote from the members of the HFPA. Over the years, these categories grew and adapted to changes in the industry. In 1947 awards were added for Best Score and Best Screenplay. Four years later the leading actor categories were divided into two: Drama and Musical/Comedy. The Cecil B. DeMille award was introduced in 1953 and a further landmark addition was made in 1955 when the awards recognised for the first time the new industry of television. In 1962 the Golden Globe Awards were televised for the first time, by KTTV in Los Angeles. Almost 20 years later the awards were broadcast nationally by CBS in 1981 and 1982, and after that by Ted Turner's TBS. NBC took over the show in 1995 and the glamorous ceremony is now distributed to 125 countries - surely fulfilling the original vision of the foreign journalists who wanted to spread the word to the world of the wonder of the moving picture. |
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