Honorary Awards, 1940

Awards presented February 27, 1941

To Bob Hope, in recognition of his unselfish services to the Motion Picture Industry

Hope, who first hosted the Oscar award ceremony in 1940, during the presentation of the 1939 awards, is known for his many jokes about never receiving an Oscar. ("Welcome to the Academy Awards, or as it's known at my house, Passover.")  In fact, Hope is one of the most-honored people in the history of the awards, having taken home four honorary awards in addition to the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. This first of his honorary citations came with a silver plaque and not a statuette, but he received one of those with his third honorary award at the 1952 ceremonies. He continued to joke about not winning one, however.

 

To Col. Nathan Levinson for his outstanding service to the industry and the Army during the past nine years, which has made possible the present efficient mobilization of the motion picture industry facilities for the production of Army Training Films.

Jack Warner, Sid Grauman, Nathan Levinson, and Ray Schrock at the inauguration of sound equipment at Grauman's Egyptian Theater in 1927.

As a representative of Western Electric, it was Levinson who invited Sam Warner to a demonstration of the company's sound recording research. Warner was so impressed that he hired Levinson to help the Warner Bros. studio make its historic move toward synchronized sound. Levinson worked on not only the 1926 Don Juan, the first feature with synchronized music and sound effects, but also the 1927 feature in which Al Jolson assures us that we haven't heard anything yet, The Jazz Singer. He spent his long career at the studio, racking up one of the longest unbroken strings of nominations in Oscar history, but receiving only one Oscar, for Yankee Doodle Dandy. He also received two technical achievement awards. He served as a major in World War I, and was later promoted to colonel, so he was always known as "Col. Levinson" at the studio. As the honorary award notes, Levinson was involved with helping the Hollywood studios prepare for the wartime mobilization of the industry long before Pearl Harbor forced the United States into the war.