An Academy Award is the most prestigious honor an actor can earn. It’s the be-all, end-all of the entertainment industry, and it’s something the Academy protects the power of tightly. This is probably why the Academy lied about the first-ever winner of the Best Actor award.
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Yes, the person that any trivia site or fact list will tell you won the first Best Actor award, Emil Jannings (a Nazi, by the way), actually came in second. When all the votes had been tabulated, the performer who had been democratically chosen to have that famous golden fella bequeathed to him was removed from contention by the powers that be — because he was a dog.
Listen, I get it. Handing out a major award to a creature that’s unable to give a speech is anti-climactic. It also sets a highly confusing tone. Not to mention, you’re going to have to honor this talented creature with montages and graphics for the rest of your vaunted awards’ hopefully long run. The historical first award photo would, preferably, not be a tail jutting out from behind a podium.
All that said, I think we can agree that this is the move of despotic cowards, and this dog deserves to have the history books corrected.
The dog in question? Rin Tin Tin, an absolutely legitimate international film star with name recognition most actors today would dream of
And so, according to legend, when the time came to vote for the inaugural Oscars, he was the name the most voters settled on. After all, it’s an easy name to remember, with the bonus of not having to make a difficult choice between human actors. The Oscars, unfortunately, didn’t see the incredible PR possibilities of actually handing him the award, however, and instead made a mockery of movie meritocracy. As such, writer Susan Orlean has taken up this fight herself, after documenting the event in her book about Rin Tin Tin and campaigning for the late dog to be finally made whole.
Is there a chance that this whole thing is nothing more than an urban Oscars legend? Well, yes. There are plenty of articles to that end, talking about the lack of evidence — namely, the ballots everyone voted with. Unless, of course, they were burned, or sunk to the bottom of the La Brea Tar Pits. Which is exactly what I would do, if I was the Academy on the brink of historical embarrassment.
Either way, I choose to believe it, forever delighted by the image of a well-deserved golden statue hanging from Rin Tin Tin’s mouth.