The first behind-the-scenes history of the organization behind the Academy Awards. -For all the near-fanatic attention brought each year to the Academy Awards, the organization that dispenses those awards-the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences-has yet to be understood. To date, no one has ever produced a thorough account of the Academy-s birth and its awkward adolescence, and the few reports on those periods from outside have always had a glancing, cursory quality. Yet the story of the Academy-s creation and development is a critical piece of Hollywood-s history. Now that story is finally being told. Bruce Davis, executive director of the Academy for over twenty years, was given unprecedented access to its archives, and the result is a revealing and compelling story of the men and women, famous and infamous, who shaped one of the best-known organizations in the world. Davis writes about the Academy with as intimate a view of its workings, its awards, and its world-famous membe
