The first Academy Awards ceremony was held in Hollywood on May 16, 1929
with a mere 270 guests. The name Oscar would not used for another few
years. Emil Jannings was the first Best Actor and Janet Gaynor Best Actress.

The first 12 winners (and the 20 films that were given an honorary scroll of commendation) had already been revealed in the Los Angeles Times three
months earlier.

The inaugural awards were the only time in Academy history that the
ceremony wasn’t broadcast in some way; even a year later it was covered
live on radio.

ED DANAHUE

Sir Philip Anthony Hopkins is 82 years old today.

Welsh actor Anthony Hopkins is best known for his portrayal of the
ingenious serial killer Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs 
(1991), a role that won him the Academy Award for Best Actor. He
has also played roles in The Mask of Zorro (1998) and Nixon (1995).  

Hopkins turned to TV in 2016 upon landing a starring role on HBO’s
series Westworld.  He was encouraged by actor Richard Burton to
pursue acting at age 15.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a film about a group of patients at a
mental institution, opened in theaters on this day in 1975. Directed by
Milos Forman and based on a 1962 novel of the same name by Ken
Kesey, the film starred Jack Nicholson and was co-produced by the
actor Michael Douglas. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest went on to
become the first film in four decades to win in all five of the major
Academy Award categories: Best Actor (Nicholson’s first win), Best
Actress (Louise Fletcher, who played Nurse Ratchet), Best Director,
Best Screenplay (Adapted) and Best Picture.

Louise Fletcher as Nurse Frida Ratchet.

Oregon State Psychiatric Hospital, now a museum in Salem, was
the setting for the movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”.

Kate Elizabeth Winslet

Kate Winslet is the youngest person to acquire six Academy Award
nominations, including the 2008 Academy Award for Best Actress
which she won for her role in "The Reader". One of the few actresses
to have won three of the four major American entertainment awards
(EGOT), with her Oscar, Emmy and Grammy wins.

British actress Kate Winslet won her first Oscar for her
portrayal of a German woman with a secret Nazi past
in the romantic drama ‘The Reader.’

1997

Richard Edmund Williams (March 19, 1933 – August 16, 2019)

LONDON (AP) — Richard Williams, a Canadian-British animator whose work
on the bouncing cartoon bunny in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (1988) helped
blur the boundaries between the animated world and our own, has died. His 
daughter, Natasha Sutton Williams, said the Oscar-winning artist died from 
cancer at his home in Bristol, England on Friday.