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In anticipation to the 91st Academy Awards ceremony, which will be held on February 24 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, I thought I would write an article related to the most prestigious awards in the movie industry. So, here are 20 interesting facts about the Oscars.    1. An X-rated winner Midnight Cowboy (1969), directed by John Schlesinger and starring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, is the only X-rated film ever to win the Oscar for Best Picture. Producer John Hellman accepted the statuette at the 42nd Academy Awards ceremony, on April 7, 1970.   (from left to right) British poster for Midnight Cowboy ; John Hellman holding the Best Picture Oscar statuette at the 42nd Academy Awards ceremony.   Bonus fact: Midnight Cowboy was also the first gay-related movie to win Best Picture.   2. Posthumous nominations James Dean is the only performer to date to receive two posthumous nominations in the Best Actor category: the first for East of Eden (1955), ...

The 1950s were an era of both prosperity and great conflict. After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a series of conflicts collectively known as the Cold War. The Soviet Union began the Space Race with the launch of Sputnik 1, while Fidel Castro became the first Communist leader in the Western hemisphere. The landmark Brown v. Board of Education court decision ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, and the Civil Rights Movement was born. Joseph Stalin died, the Vietnam War began, and Elvis Presley turned rock 'n' roll into the most popular music genre in the world.   (from left to right) Replica of Sputnik 1; Fidel Castro; the Vietnam War; Elvis Presley.   The 1950s changed Hollywood as well. As a result of the introduction of television, studios were desperate to attract audiences back to the theatres and resorted to such exotic techniques as CinemaScope and 3D film. The Cold War era zeitgeist translated into a ren...

Rock Hudson was one of the most popular leading men in the 1950s and 1960s. Considered a classic example of the «heartthrob» of Hollywood's Golden Age, he achieved stardom in films such as Magnificent Obsession (1954), All That Heaven Allows (1955) and Giant (1956), the latter of which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. His starring role opposite Doris Day in the hugely successful Pillow Talk (1959) made him the number-one male actor in America at that time. In a career that spanned four decades, Rock appeared in nearly 70 films and starred in several television productions, notably the procedural drama McMillan & Wife (1971-1977), with Susan Saint James. But before Rock, there was Roy. Rock Hudson, one of the most popular leading men in the 1950s and 1960s.   Rock Hudson was born Roy Harold Scherer, Jr. on November 17, 1925, in the village of Winnetka, Illinois. His parents were Katherine «Kay» ( née Wood), a homemaker and later telephone operator, an...

In the two years after the Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, over 60,000 American servicemen had died in combat overseas. The country was right in the middle of a costly war and thousands of families were mourning the loss of their loved ones. Taking advantage of this scenario, MGM became interested in making a film that would somehow console grieving families by fueling «hope in a connection between at risk or deceased loved ones and the folks they leave behind.» (from left to right) Photograph taken from a Japanese plane during the attack on Pearl Harbor; the entrance to the MGM studios in Culver City (1947).   Looking to match the success of the afterlife comedy Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), MGM chief Louis B. Mayer commissioned that film's producer, Everett Riskin, to find a story with a similar premise. He came up with «Fliers Never Die», in which a couple of brothers tutored their youngest sibling from the great beyond. The studio, however, was not impr...