Oscars

Native Activist Gets Apology from MPAAS For 1973 Oscars Protest

Sacheen Littlefeather appeared in lieu of Marlon Brando to decline his Oscar for "The Godfather" as a protest against racist portrayals of American Indians. The Academy has just now apologized for the abuse she endured during the ceremony and afterward.

Trump loves ‘Gone With the Wind.’ Historians, not so much.

As has happened fairly regularly during the Trump administration, historians on Twitter expressed their displeasure after Trump praised Gone with the Wind.

President Trump's Take on Parasite Echoes an Old Debate Over the Role of Non-American Films at the Oscars

Parasite was in fact the first foreign-language film to win Best Picture, but Hamlet, starring Laurence Olivier, was the first non-American film to win Best Picture, in 1949.

The Dramatic Relationship Between Black America and the Academy Awards

by Elwood Watson

From Hattie McDaniel to #OscarsSoWhite. 

Green Book and the Oscars' Complicated History With Movies About Race

While many supporters of Green Book believe it’s a clever inversion of old tropes, its detractors see its victory as a continuation of the Oscars rewarding a familiarly naive story, told from a familiarly white viewpoint.

The Decline of the American Empire – And Hollywood’s

by Dennis Broe

The reason the old Hollywood spectaculars declined.

Pop Culture Roundup: This Week

This week ... Spielberg, Van Gogh, Trumbo, the movie "Race" and more. 

Story of the Week: The man who began campaigning against #OscarsSoWhite – 74 years ago

by Jenny Woodley

In 1942 a man called Walter White travelled from New York to Hollywood, armed with a letter of introduction from the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. His aim was to try to persuade filmmakers to positively portray African Americans in movies.

Hollywood’s first hit film was an embarrassingly racist movie about the Klan

by William Loren Katz

'The Birth of a Nation': A Century Later

Oscars: Real History Is Far More Intriguing than Reel History

by Bruce Chadwick

Several Oscar Best Picture nominees have been lashed by critics for their misguided history. These movies are just the latest in a long line of very good films that have been chastised for distorting history.

When It Matters that Hollywood Get History Right

by Robert Brent Toplin

Even when Hollywood’s got a good story to tell, the facts matter.

America’s Entertainment Capitals: Hollywood and Brooklyn. Yes, Brooklyn.

by Bruce Chadwick

What do Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond, Mary Tyler Moore, Eddie Cantor, George Gershwin, Jerry Seinfeld, Jackie Gleason, Spike Lee and Joan Rivers have in common? Brooklyn!

Why "Dallas Buyers Club" Should Win Best Picture

by Andrea Milne

The movie captures the emotional exhaustion hundreds of thousands of Americans experienced during the HIV/AIDS crisis of the ’80s and ’90s.

Jim Cullen: How Six Oscar Winners Tell the Story of America

Jim Cullen is chairman of the history department at the Fieldston School in New York and author of "Sensing the Past: Hollywood Stars and Historical Visions" (Oxford University Press). A box office is not a voting booth, but they have their similarities. Neither is entirely democratic in the ways it offers choices, and each is a little too deferential to market forces. But both tell stories about the state of the nation, produced by teams that are fronted by star performers.In politics, some of the most successful performers take on multiple roles. Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama: Their stories have offered versions of the country — where it had been, where it was headed. Some were stories of restoration, others of progress.In the Republic of Hollywood, it’s movie stars, not politicians, who rule. And in Hollywood, as in politics, one of the recurring themes is our national ambivalence about powerful institutions — religious, economic, military or political — and their influence over everyday life.

Jim Cullen: With Lincoln, A New Frontier for Day-Lewis

Jim Cullen is chairman of the history department at the Fieldston School in New York and author of "Sensing the Past: Hollywood Stars and Historical Visions" (Oxford University Press).(CNN) -- If, as many observers believe, Daniel-Day Lewis wins the Academy Award for best actor on Sunday, he will become the first man to win three (Meryl Streep has done this; Maggie Smith might match her if she wins for her turn in Quartet). Such an honor would ratify Day-Lewis' standing not simply as one of the greatest actors of his time, but for all time.Like Robert De Niro, Day-Lewis is seen as the quintessential method actor, a commitment he has taken to extremes in his well-known penchant for embodying his characters even when the cameras aren't rolling. Day-Lewis also is notable for the extraordinary breadth of roles he has played.He first came to global attention in 1985 when he appeared simultaneously as the priggish Cecil Vyse in the Merchant-Ivory film adaptation of E.M. Forster's 1907 novel "Room with a View" as well as Johnny, the gay East End punk, in Stephen Frears' brilliantly brash "My Beautiful Launderette."...