Why is the Academy Award statue called "Oscar"?

In 2013, the Academy Awards were officially renamed the Academy Awards, named after the famous statuettes awarded to the winners. "We're renaming it," Oscar show co-producer Neil Meron told The Wrap at the time. "We don't call it 'The 85th Academy Awards,' which makes it kind of musty. It's called 'The Academy Awards.'" But how did the statuette get its nickname in the first place?

A popular theory is that the Academy Award for Merit moniker (the official name of the statuette) was coined by Academy Award librarian and future Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Margaret Herrick . Legend has it that when Herrick first saw the statue in 1931, she said it looked like her Uncle Oscar. According to Emanuel Levy, author of All About the Oscars: The History and Politics of the Academy Awards, when Herrick said this, columnist Sidney Sco Sidney Skolsky was present and later wrote: "The employees affectionately called their famous statuette 'Oscar.'"

Although "Oscar" was first used as a nickname for the statuette was suggested by Skolsky in a 1934 New York Daily News article, but there does not appear to be any evidence that Skolsky was actually responsible for the above quote. Skolsky claimed in his 1975 memoir Don't Get Me Wrong, I Love Hollywood that he first used the nickname in reference to a classic vaudeville joke: "Oscar, would you like a cigar? " Attempting to mock the Oscar:

"Would you like a cigar, Oscar?" The orchestra leader reached for it; the comedian backed away and made the hilarious remark. The audience laughed at Oscar. I started typing… “The Academy Awards were recognized by Hollywood with little dissent… The Academy went to great lengths to keep the results honest and announced that voting would last until the 8:00 o’clock dinner… and then a lot of players showed up late, demanding the right to vote… …so voting continues until 10 o’clock, or two hours after the ballot boxes are supposed to close…it was King Vidor who said: “This year the elections are on the level”…which caused everyone to say something about other years Comments... While Katharine Hepburn wasn't in attendance to accept her Oscar, her devoted companion and her Hollywood resident girl, Laura Harding, was there to hear Hepburn receive applause for a change …” In my columns for the next year, I would use the word “Oscar” whenever the Academy Awards were mentioned. A few years later, Oscar became a recognized name. Turns out it's a magical name. ”

A Time magazine article of September 11, 1939, “The Return of the Rat,” seemed to back up Skolsky’s assertion, stating:

“This This week, Sidney Skolsky joined publisher George Backer's growing team of writers for his New York Post. Hollywood felt publisher Backer had chosen the right horse because Skolsky is one of the most capable columnists in the industry (he created the "Oscars") and by far the most popular..."

Although Skolsky has actual evidence to back up his claims, but his claim that he coined the nickname is still a bit dubious. Many people claim that in 1934, Walt Disney won an Oscar for The Three Little Pigs. In his acceptance speech—the same year Skolsky first reported on the award—Disney referred to the statuette as his little "Oscar," a term that is said to be commonly used in the industry as a derision of the Oscars. nickname (as Skolsky claims he used), but in this theory, Walt Disney is supposed to be the first person in the industry to publicly use the name in a positive light.

Maybe Herrick really thought the statuette looked like her uncle. Or maybe Skolsky actually came up with the nickname (whether he did or not, he certainly helped popularize it). In the end, no one really knows why the Academy Awards are called the Academy Awards.

The design concept for the Academy Award statuette was conceived by MGM director Cedric Gibbons. His idea was to have a knight standing on a film reel holding a sword. Sculptor George Stanley was then hired to create actual statuettes based on this design concept. The first Academy Awards ceremony was held on May 16, 1929, in the Blossom Room of the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood. The Oscar moniker was not officially adopted by the Academy until 1939.

Incidentally, the Academy notes that the five spokes on the film reel on which Knight stands represent the Academy's original five branches: writers, directors, actors, producers and technicians.