![]() Technically, Oscar statuettes always belong to the Academy.) Since 1950, all Oscar winners have been required to sign agreements promising they'll never to hock their prizes. (At the time, the Academy was none too pleased. ![]() In this room, the text describes the importance of The Best Years of Our Lives but doesn't explain you're looking at the Oscar that Russell sold in 1992 to help pay for his wife's eye surgery. Movie fans will notice that the signage throughout the museum can be sparse and overly basic-almost as if everything has been written as an introduction to film history rather than a deep dive for amateur scholars. In this room, you can see that first 1929 Oscar for Sunrise, the statue handed to Sidney Poitier when he broke the Best Actor color barrier for Lilies of the Field (1963), and Harold Russell's acting award for The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), one of two Oscars he took home that night. Historic awards statuettes are collected in Stories of Cinema-and it's a top-flight collection. With equal parts wonder and shame, curators address both the magic and the misery the industry has wrought-and that makes for a riveting visit. Exhibits don't shy from either side of the industry's split personality of craft and callousness. The true history of Hollywood is dramatic and fantastical, to be sure-but the place also has an ugly side that's usually kept hidden.īut not at this museum. So to review: The studio's mistake caused the accident and then the studio distributed footage of the accident to sell movie tickets. Yet the Fox studio decided not to waste the footage, including images of the accident and even the devastated reactions of Locklear's costar, Viola Dana, in the final film. Consequently, Locklear failed to pull out of a dive and perished in a fiery crash. In August 1920, while filming the final stunt of The Skywayman during a night shoot, Locklear became disoriented at his controls, thanks to a careless error made by the lighting crew. Ormer Locklear was a dashing daredevil aviator who parlayed his piloting skills into a movie career. The museum is the international tourist attraction dedicated to the movies that Los Angeles has always craved but never had-until now.ĭeMille Field (pictured above), where Piano's opus now stands, was the site of an infamous accident in film history. The former May Company store has been painstakingly augmented and converted into a cutting-edge gathering place to learn about film history and methods, see precious artifacts, and watch screenings of material both popular and rare. The Academy hollowed out the store, stripped it to its prewar bones, and filled it with 250,000 square feet of lighting-controlled gallery space. The location: a stately Los Angeles department store, built five stories tall in the Streamline Moderne style in 1939, a year considered by many the apotheosis in American film. It took almost a century, but the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures finally arrived in 2021. The organization is central to a long tradition of collaboration for the sake of an industry.įounded in 1927, at the tail end of the silent era, the Academy advocated for a motion picture museum right from the start, around the same time the group started handing out awards (with little fanfare at first). ![]() Within Hollywood's mighty film business, though, the Academy is Mount Olympus, where more than 10,000 members, all gods of moviemaking, are invited to gather so they may preserve, honor, and share the heritage of motion pictures throughout the world. The exhibition will run through June 2022 alongside Miyazaki film screenings at the museum’s theaters for the duration of its run.To most people, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is known, if it's known at all, as the stuffy group behind the Oscars. From there, visitors will learn more about Miyazaki’s characters and filmmaking background through galleries entitled “Creating Characters,” “Making Of,” “Creating Worlds,” “Transformations,” and “Magical Forest,” ending with a journey through a Spirited Away-themed portal. The exhibition is split into seven sections, beginning with the Totoro-themed “Tree Tunnel” gallery. Miyazaki also co-founded Studio Ghibli, whose own museum in Japan is an equally big hit with fans of the director’s works. It’s the first exhibition of its kind in North America, a retrospective of the life and career of the renowned Japanese animator behind such beloved films as Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, and Howl’s Moving Castle. Photo: Academy Museum of Motion Pictures courtesy of Photo by Joshua White + JWPictures/Academy Museum Foundation/FacebookĪccording to Girard, the museum’s “Hayao Miyazaki” exhibition has been a “huge draw for people” ever since it opened in September 2021. ![]()
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