Honorary Awards, 1947

Awards presented March 20, 1948

To James Baskett for his able and heart-warming characterization of Uncle Remus, friend and story teller to children of the world in Walt Disney's Song of the South.
(Pictured: Academy President Jean Hersholt, with Baskett and presenter Ingrid Bergman.)

To Bill and Coo, in which artistry and patience blended in a novel and entertaining use of the medium of motion pictures.

To Shoe-Shine: The high quality of this motion picture, brought to eloquent life in a country scarred by war, is proof to the world that the creative spirit can triumph over adversity. 

To Colonel William N. Selig, Albert E. Smith, Thomas Armat, George K. Spoor, [among] the small group of pioneers whose belief in a new medium, and whose contributions to its development, blazed the trail along which the motion picture has progressed, in their lifetime, from obscurity to world-wide acclaim.

Selig (1864-1948; top left) began exhibiting films in Chicago in 1896; he soon moved into production and in 1909 was the first producer to locate in Hollywood. Smith (1875-1958; top right) cofounded the Vitagraph studio in 1896; it became one of the industry's most successful, with stars such as Norma Talmadge, Rudolph Valentino, and Adolphe Menjou, and was sold to the Warner brothers in 1925. Armat (1866-1948; bottom left) was an inventor whose projector was manufactured by Edison and began being sold as the Edison Vitascope in 1896. Spoor (1872-1953; bottom right) was a pioneering exhibitor who cofounded the Essanay production and distribution company in 1907; Wallace Beery was one of the studio's early stars, and Charles Chaplin worked for the company in 1915.