The story behind the Oscar and Emmy statuettes

With the movie awards season about to wind up, we’ve already seen a long procession of trophies–in all shapes and sizes–being handed out to winners in various categories related to filmmaking.

All over the globe, there is no doubt that the most popular symbol of excellence in the field of movies is that of the bald and naked statuette given out annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) or the Oscar Awards.

No one knows for sure who gave the statuette the nickname Oscar since a lot of people are claiming credit for it. Among them was the late great actress Bette Davis who said that she named the first of her two Academy trophies Oscar because the statuette’s behind resembled the buttocks of one of her ex-husbands.

The Oscar statuette’s body is actually made of Britannia metal, a pewter-like alloy of 90 percent tin and 10 percent antimony (a brittle, lustrous, white metallic element often used in alloys). During the Second World War, however, Oscar trophies were made of plaster since metal was scarce then. The plaster Oscars received by the winners (among them, Ingrid Bergman and Jennifer Jones) during the war years were eventually replaced with real ones when things went back to normal in 1945.

According to the book, Behind the Oscar by Anthony Holden, the statuettes are handcast from a steel mold that is kept in a tightly-guarded vault during the off-awards season.

The Oscar statuettes are manufactured by the R.S. Owens company which also makes trophies for the Emmy Awards and the Miss America pageant. This Chicago-based firm begins working on the first of the 100 Oscar statuettes on the first day of the year. The trophies are finished in time for the late March presentation of the annual Academy Awards.

A team of 12 people (all in white gloves – so they don’t leave fingerprints on the trophy) work on a single Oscar statuette. Each one is finished in approximately five hours. It is a tedious process that begins with sanding and polishing. The next step is to coat the statuette first in copper, then nickel, silver and – to make it really valuable – 24-karat gold. As a final touch, each trophy is sprayed with epoxy lacquer that serves as a permanent lamination. Academy Award winners, therefore, only need to dust off their trophies. No need to polish the statuettes with cleaning solvents – so says R.S. Owens president Scott Siegel in an interview with Behind the Oscar author Anthony Holden.

Academy Award winners also have to return their trophies to the Academy office in Beverly Hills the morning after the glittery Oscar awards presentation for engraving. Their names are then permanently affixed on the brass base of their respective trophies.

Like the Oscar statuettes, the trophies for the Emmy Awards (for American television) are also manufactured in the same tedious process by the R.S. Owens plant in Chicago. The Emmy statuette is that of a winged woman (symbolizing the muse of art) holding an atom (to represent the electron of science). According to an article written by Sandra Parker for the Emmy Awards souvenir program, the design for the Emmy trophy was created by American TV engineer Louis McManus who used his wife as model.

Each Emmy trophy weighs about four pounds. It uses materials similar to those of the Oscar statuettes: Britannia metal plated with copper, nickel, silver and 24-karat gold.

Emmy is not the official name of the award-giving body that honors outstanding achievements in the field of television in the US. It is an organization called Academy of Television Arts and Scien-ces (ATAS).

Initially, ATAS founder Syd Cassyd wanted to nickname the trophy Ike which is short for the television iconoscope tube. This was disapproved by the ATAS members. They were afraid that the public would confuse the awards’ nickname with that of Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower.

Then, somebody came up with the nickname Immy. Immy seemed appropriate since in the early days of television, it was a term used by technical people to refer to "image orthicon camera tube."

For a while, Immy was used as a nickname for the American TV awards – until it later became the now popular Emmy.

(Next: A critical look at the trophies handed out by the local award-giving bodies.)