Emmy Awards

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Emmy Awards

The movies have their Oscars. Broadway has its Tonys. Off-Broadway has its Obies. And television has its Emmys. Ever since January 1949, when the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences first presented them at the Hollywood Athletic Club, the Emmy Awards have remained the most highly visible and coveted honor earned for achievement in television. The trophy's name was derived from "Immy," a word routinely employed to signify the image orthicon camera tube, which was in use during the early years of television. The statuette—a gold-plated winged lady hoisting a globe—was designed by television engineer Louis McManus, using his wife as a model. McManus himself was honored during that first ceremony with a special award "for his original design of the Emmy."

Over the years, the Emmy Awards have expanded and evolved. In 1949, six trophies were handed out; today, scores of Emmys are won each year for both national and local programs. The initial master of ceremonies for the awards was Walter O'Keefe, a long-forgotten radio quiz show emcee and celebrity interviewer. Across the decades since, the ceremony has been hosted by a gallery of star names, including Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra, Bill Cosby and Johnny Carson; while among the many great acting legends who have won the award are Helen Hayes, John Gielgud, Julie Harris, Laurence Olivier, Dustin Hoffman, Bette Davis, Anthony Hopkins, Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy and Ingrid Bergman. The first Emmy recipient was Shirley Dinsdale and her puppet, Judy Splinters, categorized as "Most Outstanding Television Personality."

The Emmy categories, particularly during the early years, were frequently, and somewhat arbitrarily, re-named. Actor William Frawley, for example, was nominated for five successive years for his role as Fred Mertz in I Love Lucy. His first nomination, in 1953, was as "Best Series Supporting Actor"; the following four were re-designated annually as "Best Supporting Actor in a Regular Series," "Best Actor in a Supporting Role," "Best Supporting Performance By an Actor," and "Best Continuing Supporting Performance By an Actor in a Dramatic or Comedy Series." The procedure for securing nominations and naming winners also changed, while the number and variety of categories expanded. By the end of the 1990s, the most popular and high-profile awards—as with the Oscars—remained those for best performers and best programs, but established Emmy Award categories had come to include directing, writing, casting, and hairstyling, and to acknowledge technological expertise with awards for technical direction, electronic camerawork, film editing, and videotape editing.

The Emmys have been fraught with controversy and internal conflict, characterized by in-fighting between the New York and Hollywood chapters of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, and disputes between other Academy factions, followed by lawsuits, rule changes and separations of power and responsibility. Some of the most publicized Emmy squabbles have involved boycotts. Upon learning that their awards would not be handed out during the televised broadcast, TV directors and writers banded together and threatened to boycott the 1974-75 show. In the previous decade, the news branches of CBS and ABC snubbed the 1963-64 Emmys. At the time, CBS News President Fred Friendly alleged that voting practices were "unrealistic, unprofessional and unfair," and CBS News again refused to participate in 1964-65 and 1965-66. The 1979-80 affair was also boycotted—on that occasion by performers wishing to coerce the TV networks to resolve a seven-week-old strike by the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

Another cause for concern is the situation whereby certain actors have amassed more trophies than can fit on their mantels for playing the same character year after year, while other equally fine performers have remained unrewarded. Susan Lucci, for example, nominated for umpteen Emmys for her performance as Erica Kane in the soap opera All My Children, and Angela Lansbury, similarly singled out for playing Jessica Fletcher in Murder, She Wrote, by the late 1990s had never won. Their failures to collect a single statuette became a national joke. Nonetheless, echoing the annual hype that surrounds the Oscars, critics and viewers continue to speculate as to the nominees and the winners, and gather before their television sets for the star-studded prime-time ceremony. And the winners, setting aside any behind-the-scenes tension, beam proudly for the cameras as, gratefully, they accept their gold-plated Emmys.

—Rob Edelman