After the holidays are over and the new year begins the season for entertainment and media awards begin. From January to the first of April there is usually some kind of awards show honoring actors, singers, musicians, artists and craftsmen in all phases of the entertainment industry. Since Boomers are the first of the television generation, we became the first viewers to make these ceremonies entertainment vehicles in their own right. Of course, the Oscars are the granddaddy of all the award programs and were around well before television was broadcasting. The Grammys, the Emmys, the Tonys, the SAG Awards, the many country music awards, the People’s Choice and all the others have become part of American culture. They have become like sporting events in that all the nominees race for the win. Bookies give odds and take bets on the outcome of these awards shows and many viewers make a celebration of the televised event.
The Golden Globe Awards have been around since the beginning of television network broadcasting and are now the third most watched awards program behind the Oscars and Emmys but it took awhile for the film and TV fans to take the Hollywood Foreign Press Awards (HFPA) ceremonies seriously. To understand the Golden Globe Awards, one has to look at the HFPA, the organization that presents them. Founded in 1943 by eight newspaper and magazine writers, it was first called the Hollywood Foreign Correspondents Association. Hollywood had news correspondents from 55 different countries who’s job it was to keep their readers informed about the comings and goings of the movie and television community. The writers in the association represented the very lucrative non-U.S. markets and therefore Hollywood wanted to help them get the news and publicity in an organized and uniform manner to help movie ticket sales abroad. There are presently about 90 members of HFPA and they vote and present awards.
The first awards were handed out in 1944 for the 1943 film year and the winners were for Best Picture The Song of Bernadette which also won the Best Actress for Jennifer Jones. Paul Lukas won Best Actor for Watch on the Rhine. The ceremony was held at 20th Century Fox Studios and the winners received scrolls presented by the president of the association. By 1946 the organization had grown to some 60 members. HFCA president Marina Cistermas came up with the idea of presenting the winners with a statue of a globe made of gold encircled by a strip of film and mounted on marble. “A great blunt instrument,” as 1948 best actress winner Jane Wyman said of the statue. The HFPA has always been very generous with the awards. There are no regular awards for technical achievement such as camera work, sound, makeup, set design, or lighting. The voting mechanics have always been a bit odd. Until 1970 a voter could wait until the night of the ceremony to cast their votes.
As years went by, more categories were added. In 1950, a Life Achievement Award was added. Cecil B. DeMille was the first winner and the award became know as the DeMille Award. Also in 1950 a split developed among the group regarding voting procedures, award categories, and the election of association officers. Two groups formed. One group kept the HFCA moniker. The other called itself the Foreign Press Association of Hollywood. In 1955 the two groups re-merged and the association was called Hollywood Foreign Press Association. That was also the first year television awards were presented. Dinah Shore, I Love Lucy, and Walt Disney’s Davy Crockett were the first winners for television achievement.
Until 1958 association officers handed the awards out. But during the 1958 ceremony Rat Packers Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. stormed the stage and literally seized control of the proceedings, martini glasses in hand. The incident was so popular and the publicity was so great that celebrity presenters became part of the proceedings from then on. In 1963 Globe Girls were added to bring the awards to the presenters and escort the winners backstage. The first two were Hungarian actress Eva Six for films and Donna “Ellie Mae” Douglas for television. Over the years, such ladies as Raquel Welch, Dawn Welles, Susan St. James, Jamie Lee Curtis, Farrah Fawcett, Carrie Fisher, and Laura Dern have served as Globe Girls. In 1964 the Golden Globes ceremony first appeared on television as a segment of the Andy Williams Show. NBC signed to broadcast the event in 1965. In 1968 the FCC made a startling charge. The HFPA was accused of giving awards based on attendance. If the chosen winner wasn’t present at the ceremony the award would be given to a nominee who was present. NBC dropped the broadcast of the program and the Golden Globes lost some of their credibility. The HFPA handed the vote-tallying task over to an outside accounting firm as the other awards shows, did but it would be 1975 before the event was back on television.
The most damaging incident to the Golden Globes credibility came in 1982. The HFPA had developed a Most Promising Newcomer Award. Ben Kingsley won it in 1981 for Gandhi, even though he had made films and done television in Britain for years. In 1982, however, the award was presented to Pia Zadora for her role in what amounted to a soft core porn film called Butterfly. Two things were wrong. Zadora was not a newcomer. She had been in movies and television since she was 10 years old, Secondly Butterfly had not yet been released. Zadora had done a nude Playboy spread in conjunction with the film’s publicity campaign. Zadora’s husband, hotel and casino magnet, Meshulam Riklis had flown a number of the HFPA members to Las Vegas to spend a weekend at his hotel and casino where they got to see Pia perform her nightclub act. They were treated to a luncheon at the Riklis palatial estate before being flown back to Hollywood by private jet. Riklis had essentially bought the award for his wife. Butterfly was released later in the summer and disappeared to VHS tape after two weeks. The Globes had a serious image problem for a decade after that incident.
In the last 15 years the Golden Globes have seen their image and prestige rise as media experts realize the marketing value of the award. The fact that the awards are divided into comedy and musical along with drama categories means that some comedic performances will be rewarded rather then overlooked. Critics still say that an award is given not for excellence but for greasing the right palms and kissing the correct…er..well..you know. The Awards have gained a viewer following and are more popular with TV audiences than they ever were. In the end anyone one takes them too seriously is just being unrealistic. Watching the Golden Globes ceremony on the tube is a pleasant way to spend a winter evening, nothing more.
snicewanger@yahoo.com