Looking Back at Oscar’s 95 Years of Growing Pains

Millions of moviegoers think the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has one purpose: To hand out Oscars. Members know that’s not true and veteran AMPAS exec Bruce Davis reveals that awards were initially a low priority for the organization, in his new book “The Academy and the Award: The Coming of Age of Oscar and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences” (Brandeis University Press) about the early decades of the group.Davis also makes clear that the group, formed in 1927 as movies were undergoing seismic shifts, made decisions that forever changed the way we watch movies — but that had nothing to do with Oscar.The org was the brainchild of MGM exec Louis B. Mayer, whose goal was “to stymie the formation of craft unions,” Davis writes.So for several years the Acad became an arbiter of labor disputes, which nearly led to its downfall.But even before that,...