Oscars Trivia: 40 Questions From the First Academy Awards to the 1990s

The first Academy Awards ceremony lasted about fifteen minutes. It took place at a dinner in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on May 16, 1929, and there was no suspense at all: the winners had been announced three months earlier. Every bit of Oscars trivia since then, from the tied votes to the refused statuettes, grew out of that small private banquet.

This quiz covers the awards from that first night through the 1990s. There are forty questions in five rounds, with answers in bold, and short notes on the ones that tend to surprise people. Dates refer to the year of the films honored unless a ceremony year is given.

Oscars trivia, round one: the first ceremony

1. Which film won the first award for the top picture? Wings
2. Which film won the separate first-year award for Unique and Artistic Production? Sunrise
3. Who won the first Best Actor award? Emil Jannings
4. For how many films was Jannings honored? Two: The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh
5. Who won the first Best Actress award? Janet Gaynor
6. For how many films was she honored? Three: 7th Heaven, Street Angel and Sunrise
7. Which Academy president presided over the first ceremony? Douglas Fairbanks
8. What made Wings unique among the twentieth century’s Best Picture winners? It was the only silent film among them

Questions 4 and 6 show how different the early rules were. Performers were honored for a body of work over the eligibility period rather than a single role. Gaynor’s three films included F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise, which also took the artistic award, so the very first ceremony effectively had two best pictures.

Round two: the 1930s and 1940s

9. Which 1934 film was the first to win all five major awards: Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay? It Happened One Night
10. Which two actors shared Best Actor for 1931-32? Fredric March and Wallace Beery
11. Who became the first Black performer to win an Oscar, at the 1940 ceremony? Hattie McDaniel, for Gone with the Wind
12. Gone with the Wind was the first winner of the top prize to be filmed entirely in what? Color (Technicolor)
13. Which film beat Citizen Kane for Best Picture? How Green Was My Valley
14. What were Oscar statuettes made of for three wartime ceremonies? Painted plaster
15. Which father and son both won for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre? Walter Huston and John Huston
16. What did Shirley Temple receive at the 1935 ceremony? A miniature Juvenile Award

The March and Beery tie is a technicality worth knowing. Under the voting rules of the day, a margin of fewer than three votes counted as a tie, and March was reportedly a single vote ahead, so both men took the award. The plaster statuettes came from a wartime metal shortage; the ceremonies of 1943 to 1945 handed them out, and winners could later trade them in for metal ones. The Huston result in question 15 was a family first in a single year: Walter took Best Supporting Actor, and John won both Best Director and the screenplay award for the same film.

Round three: the 1950s and 1960s

17. Which 1950 film set the record of fourteen nominations? All About Eve
18. In what year was the ceremony first televised? 1953
19. Which 1959 epic won eleven Oscars? Ben-Hur
20. Which Fellini film won the first competitive Best Foreign Language Film award? La Strada
21. Which 1960 Billy Wilder film was the last black-and-white Best Picture winner before Schindler’s List? The Apartment
22. Which two actresses tied for Best Actress for 1968? Katharine Hepburn (The Lion in Winter) and Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl)
23. Which 1969 Best Picture winner carried an X rating on release? Midnight Cowboy
24. Which director never won a competitive Oscar but accepted the Thalberg Award in 1968 with one of the shortest speeches ever? Alfred Hitchcock
25. Who holds the record for Best Director wins? John Ford, with four

The 1968 tie was exact, not a technical one: Hepburn and Streisand received the same number of votes, which is still the only tie in the Best Actress category. Hitchcock’s speech is usually reported as “Thank you… very much indeed,” though accounts differ slightly. He had been nominated five times as Best Director without winning.

Round four: the 1970s

26. Which actor declined the Best Actor award for Patton? George C. Scott
27. Who appeared on Marlon Brando’s behalf to decline his award for The Godfather? Sacheen Littlefeather
28. Which was the first sequel to win Best Picture? The Godfather Part II
29. Which host was at the microphone when a streaker crossed the stage in 1974? David Niven
30. Who is the youngest winner of a competitive Oscar? Tatum O’Neal, aged 10, for Paper Moon
31. Which film was the second to win all five major awards? One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
32. Who was the first actor to win an Oscar after his death? Peter Finch, for Network
33. Which boxing film beat Taxi Driver, Network and All the President’s Men? Rocky

Niven was introducing Elizabeth Taylor when the streaker ran past, and his ad-libbed remark about the man “showing his shortcomings” got the biggest laugh of the night. Accounts of his exact wording vary a little, so I would accept any answer that names Niven. Finch died in January 1977, before the ceremony, and his widow accepted the award.

Round five: the 1980s and 1990s

34. Who won the first Academy Award for Best Makeup? Rick Baker, for An American Werewolf in London
35. Which actress made the Hustons a three-generation Oscar family? Anjelica Huston, for Prizzi’s Honor
36. Which 1991 film became the third to sweep the five major awards? The Silence of the Lambs
37. Kevin Costner won Best Director for his first film as a director. Which film? Dances with Wolves (1990)
38. How many Oscars did Titanic win, tying Ben-Hur? Eleven
39. How many nominations did Titanic receive, tying All About Eve? Fourteen
40. Who has won more competitive Oscars than any other person? Walt Disney, with 22

The three clean sweeps of the five major awards are spread across almost sixty years: It Happened One Night in 1934, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1975 and The Silence of the Lambs in 1991. The last of these is the oddest of the trio. It opened in February, far from the usual year-end awards season, and it is often described as the only horror film ever to win Best Picture, though how you classify it is half the fun of the debate.

Titanic’s night in 1998 was a neat case of one decade catching up with another. Its eleven wins matched the record Ben-Hur had set for 1959, and its fourteen nominations matched All About Eve, so a 1990s blockbuster ended up sharing two records set in the 1950s. Walt Disney’s total, by contrast, was built a little at a time, much of it from animated and documentary short subjects. He also received honorary awards, including the special award for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, presented as one full-size statuette accompanied by seven miniature ones.

Bonus questions and a word on the nickname

Two bonus questions for a tie-breaker. First: who hosted the ceremony more times than anyone else? The answer is Bob Hope, across nearly four decades; published counts vary between eighteen and nineteen depending on how co-hosting stints are counted, so accept either. Second: which actress holds the record of four Best Actress wins? Katharine Hepburn, for Morning Glory, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Lion in Winter and On Golden Pond.

Do not set a question on where the name “Oscar” came from. Several people have been credited with it, including the Academy librarian Margaret Herrick, who is often said to have remarked that the statuette looked like her Uncle Oscar, but no version is certain. Trivia that the Academy itself treats as a mystery is best left out of the answer key.

For the films behind several of these answers, see our Golden Age of Hollywood guide and our close look at Sunset Boulevard, which collected eleven nominations of its own.