The first Academy Awards ceremony was held on May 16, 1929, at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, California. At the time, there were 12 categories, some of them separated by genre. Rather than just having a single Best Picture category, there was an award for Outstanding Picture and one for Best Unique and Artistic picture. William Wellman’s “Wings” won Outstanding Picture, and many consider that film to be the 1929 equivalent of Best Picture. Artistic Picture, however, went to F.W. Murnau’s “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans,” and that one ought to historically count at least as much as “Wings.”
The first Oscars also had two directing categories (one for comedies and one for dramas), and three writing categories (for original screenplays, adapted screenplays, and title writing). A lot has changed in the last 95 years of Oscar history.
No category has undergone more name changes and alterations, however, than that of Best Original Score. There are so many ways to define and categorize non-diegetic movie music, that the Academy has tripped over their own feet trying to keep up. For many years, the Academy had separated Scoring categories for musicals and non-musicals, and sometimes they would distinguish between adapted scores (taken from stage productions, for instance) and wholly original scores.
This was because of Hollywood’s hot-and-cold-running relationship with musicals. Live-action musicals were more common in the 1930s and 1940s, and the Academy wanted to award films accordingly. As musicals became less common, however, certain categories couldn’t be filled, requiring the Academy to pivot by either renaming a category, or simply dropping one altogether.
In 2000, the Academy started a category called Best Original Musical, meant to replace the then-retired Best Original Musical or Comedy Score category. Because the Academy’s eligibility requirements for modern musicals are so strict, however, no films have been nominated in the category for 25 years.