The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences was established in 1927 but didn’t start handing out its annual awards until 1929 when its first awards were supposed to be for films released in Los Angeles between August 1, 1927 and July 31, 1928. I’ll explain what I mean by “supposed to be” but first, let’s take a look at the other major U.S. film awards.

The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures was established in 1909 but didn’t start handing out awards until 1929. The New York Film Critics began handing out awards in 1935. They didn’t call themselves the New York Film Critics Circle until 1973. The Golden Globes came into being in 1944, the National Society of Film Critics in 1966, the Los Angeles Film Critics in 1975, and the Broadcast Film Critics, whose awards are now known as the Critics Choice Awards, in 1995. There are many other awards now, but these along with the acting awards of the Screen Actors Guild since 1994 and the British Film Awards (BAFTAs) in recent years are the ones that have the most influence on the Academy Awards. The British Film Awards were established in 1947 but for most of its existence took place after the Academy Awards and did not have an influence on them until recent years.

When I say that the first Academy Awards were “supposed to be” for films released in Los Angeles between August 1, 1927 and July 31, 1928, what I mean is that that was their intention, but the Academy’s reminders list for the first awards included films that were released in L.A. prior to August 1 but were still playing on that date. They included such films as 1925’s The Big Parade and 1926’s Beau Geste. The Academy caught most of the errors but still ended up nominating and awarding 1927’s biggest box-office hit, 7th Heaven, which was released in May of 1927.

Although the Academy hasn’t changed much through the years, there were three things that they got glaringly wrong in the first year, which were later corrected, two of them within their first ten years of existence, and one only recently.

The oddity of the awards year running from August of one year through July of the next lasted until 1933. The eligibility period for the 1932/33 awards ran from August 1, 1932 through December 31, 1933. 1934 was the first year in which eligibility was based on the calendar year.

There were no awards given for supporting performances until 1936, although occasionally a supporting performance, such as those of Frank Morgan in The Affairs of Cellini in 1934 and Franchot Tone in Mutiny on the Bounty in 1935 got into the mix.

The third glaring error was basing their awards on films released solely in the Los Angeles area at a time when most major films opened first in New York where they were reviewed nationally. In later years, prestige films were often given Oscar qualifying runs in Los Angeles but did not open in New York until the following year when they became eligible for most of the critics’ awards.

Casablanca was the first and only film that benefitted from a delayed opening in Los Angeles. The film opened in New York in November 1942 but was withheld from further distribution when it was announced that the big three, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, would be meeting in Casablanca on January 23, 1943, the day the film opened in Los Angeles and everywhere else.

The National Board of Review ignored the film in 1942, but the New York Film Critics nominated it in two categories – Best Actor (Humphrey Bogart) and Director (Michael Curtiz). Bogart was nominated for both Casablanca and Across the Pacific but lost to James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy, which was also directed by Curtiz. Curtiz was himself nominated for both films, losing to John Farrow for Wake Island. Best Picture was In Which We Serve which was another Los Angeles delayed release film that wasn’t Oscar eligible until 1943.

The National Board of Review played catch-up by including Casablanca as one of the ten best films of 1943.

Casablanca was a huge box-office success and today is regarded as one of the greatest films of Hollywood’s Golden Era, but the expected 1943 Oscar winner was Daryl F, Zanuck’s prestige production of The Song of Bernadette, the first major production given a Los Angeles only opening the year before its New York premiere. Its loss to Casablanca was generally blamed on the extras who still had voting rights at the Oscars. Time has proven them right.

The most notorious exclusion of a New York released, Los Angeles delayed release was 1973’s Day for Night for which Valentina Cortese received numerous Best Supporting Actress awards in 1973 but lost in that category at the 1974 Oscars to Ingrid Bergman in Murder on the Orient Express. Bergman, who was of course one of the stars of Casablanca, had been passed over for an Oscar nomination for that film in favor of her now much less revered performance in For Whom the Bell Tolls. Such was the irony of Oscar eligibility.

Today, there are six qualifying U.S. metropolitan areas where a film is eligible for Oscar nominations if it has had a theatrical qualifying run of at least seven consecutive days in a commercial motion picture theatre with paid admissions, during which screenings must occur at least three times daily, with at least one screening beginning between 6 pm and 10 pm daily. The film must be advertised and exploited during their theatrical qualifying run in a manner that is normal and customary to theatrical feature distribution practices and released within the Academy Awards year deadline.

The six qualifying U.S. metro areas are Los Angeles County; City of New York (any of its five boroughs); the Bay Area (counties of San Francisco, Marin, Alameda, San Mateo and Contra Costa); Chicago (Cook County, Illinois); Miami (Miami-Dade County, Florida); and Atlanta (Fulton County, Georgia).

Imagine if this rule were in place in 1939, Gone with the Wind wouldn’t have to have been shown anywhere else that year in order to qualify. It wouldn’t, however, have helped such films as Murder, My Sweet which opened in Minneapolis in December 1944 but wasn’t shown anywhere else until 1945, or Scarlet Street which opened in Baltimore in December 1945 but wasn’t shown anywhere else until 1946.

All films mentioned except for the 1926 version of Beau Geste are available on home video.

Happy viewing.