First Ever Televised Academy Awards…March 19, 1953

The 25th Academy Awards ceremony was not only live on television for the first time, it was live from Los Angeles and New York for the first time too! In the west, Bob Hope hosted from the RKO Pantages Theater in Hollywood, and Frerdric March hosted in the east from NBC’s International Theater in New York. There were more AT&T people on hand than there were NBC people with some 70 of Ma Bell’s finest split between the two venues. The show was sponsored by RCA for $100,000. In New York, Shirley Booth accepted the best actress statuette for ‘Come Back, Little Sheba’. In LA, the best picture went not to the favored ‘High Noon’, but to Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Greatest Show On Earth”. Here is the opening of that show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOtp4dli7-4

Bob Hope’s Oscars opening monologue at the first televised Academy Awards® on March 19, 1953. Introduced by Charles Brackett.

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