The history of the statuette is truly incredible if we consider that its connection with the world of cinema is completely coincidental …
Apparently it is Emilio Fernandez is the name of the man who inspired the famous Oscar statuette. It is a Mexican director who began shooting around the 40s and immediately had a great success, in fact his work Mexico Bloody made a lot of talk (positively) both critics and the public, and later Indian Virgin won the award. for best film at the Cannes Film Festival. However thehis directing career stopped in the early 1960s because his thinking began to feel too outdated.
However Fernandez decided to go to the other side of the camera, in fact he began working as an actor for Hollywoodand was directed by the likes of John Huston, Sam Peckinpah and Stanley Donen.
How it ended up becoming the model of the statuette
The funny thing is that what made him become the Oscar model it has nothing to do with his career in the world of cinema.
It seems that all of this was born for friendship matters. At the beginning of his career, when he arrived in Hollywood, the actor made friends with the Mexican star Dolores del Rio, then wife of the designer Cedric Gibbonsthe art director of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
In that time Gibbons had been tasked with overseeing the design of the statuette. Like this Gibbons asked Fernandez to pose for the sketch which would later serve as the foundation for the coveted award, and thus the design became the reference for artist George Stanley’s famous statuette sculpture.
It was awarded at the very first Academy Awards in Los Angeles in 1929, and the original design has remained to this day. However the Academy never officially recognized Emilio Fernandez as a model for the statuette, but Fernandez was 100% convinced that he had made a contribution. Like almost everything in Hollywood, the history of the Oscars is also shrouded in myths and legends, so even for the same statuette it is the same.
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