25th Academy Awards

25th Academy Awards

The 25th Academy Awards ceremony was held on March 19, 1953. It took place at the RKO Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, California and the NBC International Theatre in New York City.

It was the first Academy Awards ceremony to be televised, and the first ceremony to be held in Hollywood and New York City simultaneously. It was also the only year that the New York ceremonies were to be held in the International Theatre on Columbus Circle, which was shortly thereafter demolished and replaced by the New York Coliseum convention center.

A major upset occurred in the category of Best Picture. The heavily-favored High Noon lost to Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth, which is now considered among the worst films to have ever won the Academy Award for Best Picture. The American film magazine Premiere placed the movie on its list of the 10 worst Oscar winners and the British film magazine Empire rated it #3 on their list of the 10 worst Oscar winners. It has the lowest spot on Rotten Tomatoes' list of the 81 films to win Best Picture.

The Bad and the Beautiful won 5 awards that night, making it the most wins ever for a film not nominated for Best Picture. It is also only the 2nd film to have the most wins in 1 night that was not nominated for Best picture, excluding years where there were ties for the most wins. The only other film to do this before was The Thief of Bagdad.

This marked the last time ever that the Best Picture winner would take home just two Oscars.

Shirley Booth also became the last person to win an oscar in a leading role ever to be born in the 19th century.

For the first time since the introduction of Supporting Actor and Actress awards in 1936, Best Picture, Best Director, and all four acting Oscars went to six different films. This has happened only twice since, at the 29th Academy Awards for 1956, and the 78th for 2005.