Each February, hundreds of millions of movie lovers tune in to watch the glamorous ceremony and learn who will receive the highest honors in filmmaking.  The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences members vote in their own particular categories to select the winners.  For example, only actors vote on acting categories and only directors for director awards. Achievements in up to 25 regular categories will be honored on February 27, 2011, at the 83rd Academy Awards presentation at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center.

The first Academy Awards ceremony took place out of the public eye during an Academy banquet at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Two hundred seventy people attended the May 16, 1929 dinner in the hotel’s Blossom Room; guest tickets cost $5.  Only three times in its more than 80-year history has the Academy Awards failed to take place as scheduled. The first was in 1938, when massive flooding in Los Angeles delayed the ceremony by a week. In 1968 the Awards ceremony was postponed from April 8 to April 10 out of respect for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who had been assassinated a few days earlier, and whose funeral was held on April 9. In 1981 the Awards were once again postponed, this time for 24 hours because of the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan.

The Oscars is the premier night in the movie industry.  No expense is spared in this night defined by glitz, glamour, and golden statues.  It is one night in which excess is celebrated both along the red carpet and in homes across the country.