Each year the American film industry hosts several significant award ceremonies, and the Golden Globes Awards event is one of them.
It was in 1944 that the Golden Globe Awards began its glorious journey. It is hosted each year by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA). The ceremony is a significant part of the industry’s award season, which ends every year with the Academy Awards.
The Background
During January 1944, the first Golden Globe Awards ceremony was hosted at the 20th Century Fox Studios. The Awards were conducted in honor of the best performances in filmmaking for the year 1943. For the next decade, various venues were chosen to perform the award ceremonies. The awards have also been conducted at the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel made a mark in history when it also became the venue for the first-ever Academy Awards.
The host of the Golden Globe Awards each year, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), is a not-for-profit organization of journalists and photographers. These journalists are responsible for reporting on the entertainment industry inside the U.S. for foreign media. It consists of 93 members. The awards were initiated to acknowledge ground-breaking performances in film and television, both locally and internationally.
It was in 1950 that HFPA decided to introduce the presentation of a special award during the ceremony. The award had an objective of recognizing exceptional contributions to the filming industry. Cecil B. DeMille, a well-known director and producer was the first person to receive this honorary award. Consequentially, the award was named ‘Cecil B. DeMille Award.’
The trend of having one or two other prominent figures hand out the trophies initiated during the year 1963. At first, the awards were handed out exclusively by females often referred to as ‘Miss Golden Globe’. The title was later changed to the ‘Golden Globe Ambassador’ on January 5, 2018.
The hefty revenues from the ceremony each year have enabled HFPA to contribute millions of dollars to charities. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has also sponsored scholarships and other training programs for future film and drama professionals.
HFPA has also been responsible for establishing the ‘Young Artist Foundation’ in 1978. The foundation annually presents awards to encourage and recognize performers under the age of 21. The award ceremony is named the ‘Young Artist Awards’. The organization also provides scholarships annually for young artists who are financially or physically challenged.
Eligibility Criteria
The Golden Globe Award ceremony is held annually, and the awards are presented for a calendar year that begins on 1st January and lasts till the 31st December of that year. The 77th Golden Globe Awards for the year 2019 are planned to take place on the 5th of January 2020.
Films and TV dramas should meet stringent criteria to be eligible to contest in the awards. Movies should be at least be 70 minutes long and should have a seven-day release run in the Greater Los Angeles area. To put forward their films to be nominated, filmmakers need to submit an entry form within 10 days of the official screening.
The Ceremony
Since 2010, the Golden Globe ceremony started being telecasted live in all the U.S. time zones. They are known to be the third most-watched award event of the year. The first and second positions have been taken over by the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards respectively. The ceremony is broadcasted live to 167 countries internationally.
Before 2010, the Golden Globes had no regular host for the ceremony. The Golden Globe was one of the two such award events that had no hosts, the other being Screen Actors Guild Awards. The 2010 award ceremony was hosted by Ricky Gervais.
Fun Facts About the Awards
Meryl Streep set a record when she won her eighth Golden Globe Award. This is the most wins any celebrity has ever bagged. Streep is also known to have set a record for the most nominations with a record high of thirty-one nominations in all her career. Jamie Fox set the record for the most nominations with three nominations in the year 2005.
Rick Schroeder became the youngest Golden Globe winner when he won the award for his performance in ‘The Champ’. On the other hand, EnnioMorricone, at the age of 87 years old, won an award for Best Original Score for the movie ‘The Hateful Eight’. He became the oldest Golden Globe winner in the award’s history.
A single Golden Globe statuette costs approximately $800 to make and is plated in 24-Karat gold.
There have been only three films in the history of the awards that won every category they got nominated in; ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’, ‘Doctor Zhivago’, and ‘A Star Is Born’. ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ was the only movie to win Globes in all the five major categories of the awards until 2017, when ‘La La Land’ broke its winning streak. ‘La La Land’, in addition to Best Motion Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, and Screenplay, won awards for Best Original Song and Best Original Score.
The 46th Golden Globe Awards witnessed a once in a lifetime anomaly that happened when there was a three-way tie for the Best Actress in a Motion Picture award. The award was presented to Jodie Foster for The Accused, Shirley MacLaine for Madame Sousatzka, and Sigourney Weaver for Gorillas in the Mist.
Nashville, with nine nominations, is the movie that holds the record for the most nomination in a single year.
There are only four people that are known to have won two acting awards in the same year: Sigourney Weaver in 1989, Joan Plowright in 1993, Helen Mirren in 2007, and Kate Winslet in the year 2009.
In conclusion, the Golden Globes is a prestigious award ceremony that is looked forward to by prominent celebrities. It is an internationally acknowledged award function that honors and encourages merit performances in the film and drama industry. Winning a Globe is a milestone in any celebrity’s career, which makes the Golden Globe awards one of the most prominent awards of the year.