We all know
that the Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic
and technical merit for the worldwide television industry. The Emmy statuette,
depicting a winged woman holding an atom, is named after "immy", an
informal term for the image orthicon tube that was common in early television
cameras. It is considered one of the four major annual American entertainment awards,
along with the Grammy for music, the Oscar (Academy Award) for film, and the
Tony for Broadway theatre.
The first
Emmy ceremony took place on January 25, 1949, at the Hollywood Athletic Club,
but solely to honor shows produced and aired locally in the Los Angeles area.
Shirley Dinsdale has the distinction of receiving the first Emmy Award for Most
Outstanding Television Personality, during that first awards ceremony.
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| Shirley Dinsdale |
Dinsdale was
born in San Francisco, California in 1926. In 1949, she received the first Emmy
award (first award in the first presentation) for Outstanding Television
Personality when she was a student at UCLA. Shirley won as "Most
Outstanding Television Personality." She was a ventriloquist with a dummy
named 'Judy Splinters.'
Read more: The first Met Gala in the history (1948) with pics
That’s when the first Emmy Awards ceremony was held at the Hollywood Athletic Club, co-founded by Charlie Chaplin. Hollywood’s first television academy had been founded three years earlier by Sid Cassyd, a former film editor for Frank Capra who later worked as a grip at Paramount Studios and an entertainment journalist. At a time when only about 50,000 American households had TV sets, Cassyd saw the need for an organization that would foster productive discussion of the fledgling entertainment medium. The academy’s membership grew quickly, despite the lack of support from the Hollywood motion-picture establishment, which perhaps understandably felt threatened by TV and its potential to keep audiences entertained at home (and away from the theaters).
Read more: 6 Actresses with the most Oscar wins (1929 - 2024) with pics
On this day in 1949, American songwriter Walter O’Keefe hosted the first ceremony. Tickets cost just $5 to attend.
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| Walter O'keefe |