Best Actress – Oscars®, Roles and Images

On May 16, 1929 a circle of 270 representatives of the American film industry gathered together in the grand ballroom at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel to award film professionals for “special achievements” with a golden statuette – the “Oscar.” During the mere 15-minute presentation, prizes were awarded in twelve categories, including the award for “Best Actress,” which the 22-year-old Janet Gaynor received for three film roles combined.

When Julianne Moore accepted her Oscar® for Best Actress in 2015, about one billion people around the globe watched the telecast of the three and a half-hour awards ceremony. Seventy-three actresses have received the coveted trophy since 1929, and some of this elite group have won more than once. The winners stand for extraordinary acting and glamour; personifying the most diverse gender roles and stereotypes. Many of them have played characters with whom audiences can identify, affecting several generations of not just women, but men as well.

The exhibition “Best Actress – Oscars®, Roles and Images” is a tribute to the 73 women who, until now, have been honored with an Oscar® for their performances as the year’s “Best Actress in a Leading Role.” The retrospective view of 86 years of “Best Actresses” reveals the constants and transformations in Hollywood’s image of women, in which trends in society as a whole are also mirrored. At the same time the prize represents a clever staging of femininity and its clichés, which manifests itself in the film costumes as well as in the evening gowns designed for the Oscar Night.

The Oscar statuette is 34 centimeters high and weighs almost four kilos. Concealed beneath its golden exterior is an underbody made of nickel, copper and silver. The rituals surrounding the prize’s awards ceremony have changed repeatedly since 1929. Sometimes the event was simply an announcement of the names of the winners; sometimes it took place simultaneously in Los Angeles and New York, so that the award-winning actors who were performing in Broadway shows could personally accept their awards.

Although reports about the Academy Awards were broadcast on the radio, public interest was initially quite marginal. To make the event more attractive, a dramaturgy was cultivated to heighten the unknown outcome – a buildup of tension and anticipation. Since 1941 the names of the prizewinners have remained a closely guarded secret, kept in sealed envelopes until the moment they are announced. It is a tactic that has been successfully imitated many times, and it has lost nothing of its dramatic effect even today.

When the awards ceremony was first broadcast on television in 1953, representatives of the major American film studios were less than enthusiastic, because they viewed themselves in competition with the new media. The increasing popularity of the Oscar Night quickly changed this attitude, however, because it was better advertisement for Hollywood films than the studios could have expected. Moreover, leading fashion design labels and cosmetic companies have long since discovered the Oscar Night as an advertising platform, utilizing female nominees as living testimonials. This also had an effect on the public images of the nominees: While many a couture or getup documented bold individuality in the 1970s and 1980s, today it is the complete package and perfectly styled outfit that triumphs.