Numlock Awards: Honoring the Honorees
Angela Bassett did the thing (the thing being receiving recognition from her peers).
Numlock Awards is your one-stop awards season newsletter. Every week, join Walt Hickey and Michael Domanico as they break down the math behind the Oscars and the best narratives going into film’s biggest night. Today’s edition comes from Michael.
We’re a week away from the Oscars, and I wanted to focus on the categories where we have our surefire winners, where Walter’s model is essentially toothless. Because they already won.
This year, the Academy bestowed three honorary awards to Angela Bassett, Mel Brooks, and film editor Carol Littleton. Michelle Satter of the Sundance Film Festival received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
For those of you who remember, the Academy used to televise the Honorary Oscars, but they’ve held a separate Governors Awards since 2009. On the one hand, it’s nice for the honorees, who get more time to have their work highlighted. If you’re a Brooks fan, I’d recommend this Nathan Lane/Matthew Broderick tribute to Brooks from this past year’s Governors Awards:
On the other hand, we don’t get the excitement and drama that accompanied previous tributes. When Elia Kazan received his Honorary Award at the 71st Academy Awards, his past cooperation with the House Un-American Activities Committee caused a rift in the audience: Warren Beatty gave a standing ovation, Ed Harris and Amy Madigan refused to even applaud, and Steven Spielberg split the difference by applauding in his seat.
Akira Kurosawa even delightfully had a special recording from his family and colleagues back in Japan, and they somewhat oddly made everyone sing Happy Birthday to Kurosawa as he collected his Honorary Oscar in 1990. To me, that’s television magic, but to the Academy, clearly not. I want to see which filmmakers were previously snubbed by Sundance and give tepid applause to Michelle Satter. Oh well.
The Academy used to play really fast and loose with this award. Eighteen people received Honorary Oscars in 1938, including Mickey Rooney, Walt Disney, and one of the Warner Brothers (Harry, for those of you keeping score — he received a scroll).
AMPAS also used to love being cute and mixing up what type of award people received. They had a whole thing where they gave miniature Oscars to kid actors, with Hayley Mills receiving the last of these “for Pollyanna, the most outstanding juvenile performance during 1960.” Even that was a whole affair — a 32-year-old Shirley Temple came out to present the award, mentioned how Mills was a nepo baby, and then brought out former Mouseketeer Annette Funicello to accept the toddler-sized Oscar. (Mills was off working in England; the only connection between Mills and Funicello seems to be their work with Disney.)
Bob Hope received four Honorary Oscars over the course of his career — he is the only person to receive a silver plaque (1940), life membership to the Academy (1944), and a gold medal (1965) as his awards. He did get a normal statuette in 1952 for this deeply Cold War citation: “for his contribution to the laughter of the world, his service to the motion picture industry, and his devotion to the American premise.”
In the opposite direction, the Academy used to be relatively stingy with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, which honors charitable and humanitarian contributions. In the 1990s, only four people — Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, and Quincy Jones — received the Hersholt Award. The same happened in the 2000s. That got bumped up to six in the 2010s, and in the 2020s we’re already up to five.
The Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award — given to a producer — is pretty rare these days. Since 2000, only five producers have received this distinction: Dino De Laurentiis, John Calley, Francis Ford Coppola, and the husband-wife team of Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall.
So congratulations to Angela Bassett, Mel Brooks, Carol Littleton, and Michelle Satter for their Honorary Oscars. I’ll enjoy seeing you be briefly applauded in between Ryan Gosling’s performance of “I’m Just Ken.”