The program for the Governors Ball at the 2002 Oscars, which was designed by Arnold Schwartzman, was a portfolio of vintage-style postcards depicting the 10 theaters that had hosted the Academy Awards. Here are the images from that program, along with a vintage postcard of this year’s site, Union Station.
ROOSEVELT HOTEL • This Hollywood hotel was build in 1927, and its Blossom Room was the site of the first Oscars in 1929. In recent years, the room has often been used for AFI Fest parties.
AMBASSADOR HOTEL • The second Oscars, in 1930, moved to the Cocoanut Grove in the Ambassador Hotel. The hotel would host the ceremony five more times in both the Cocoanut Grove and the Fiesta Room, and in 1968 would be the site of Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination.
BILTMORE HOTEL • In 1931, the Biltmore hosted the first Oscar show ever to take place in downtown Los Angeles. It would be the site of seven more between then and 1942. It was also the location of the first official meeting in Academy history in May 1927.
GRAUMAN’S CHINESE THEATER • During World War II, the Oscars moved from a banquet setting to this celebrated movie theater, with a capacity of 2,000-plus that allowed the Academy to invite servicemen and women to attend. The Oscars would stay at the Chinese in ’45 and ’46.
SHRINE AUDITORIUM • The first of 10 Oscar ceremonies took place at the Shrine in 1947. The downtown theater’s 6,000 seats make it the largest venue ever to host the show, which it continued to do sporadically until 2001.
ACADEMY AWARDS THEATER • When the major studios briefly withdrew their financial support for the Oscars in 1949, the Academy had no choice but to move the ceremony in-house, to the 950-seat theater at headquarters in what is now West Hollywood. The location, a stone’s throw from the celebrated Troubadour nightclub, was later demolished and is now a small office building.
PANTAGES THEATRE • The 1950s belonged to this Hollywood Boulevard theater, which played host to the Oscars for 10 years beginning in 1950. It would be the site of the first-ever televised Oscar ceremony.
SANTA MONICA CIVIC AUDITORIUM • The first Oscars to take place on the west side of Los Angeles happened at this 3,000-seat theater near the beach in 1961. It would host eight shows, all in the ’60s.
DOROTHY CHANDLER PAVILION • This elegant downtown theater, part of the Music Center complex, was the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic when the Academy moved there in 1969. The move was spearheaded by the show’s producer, Gower Champion, who called the Santa Monica Civic “a dreary barn.” The Chandler would go on to host 23 Oscar shows over 30 years, still the most of any venue.
THE KODAK/DOLBY THEATRE • The Hollywood & Highland shopping center built this theater specifically for the Oscars, which moved to the venue in 2002 and did the next 19 shows there. It hosted 10 shows under the name Kodak Theatre, one as the Hollywood & Highland Center after Kodak went bankrupt and pulled out of its naming deal, and the remaining shows under its current name, the Dolby Theatre.
UNION STATION • For 2021’s COVID-era, socially-distanced ceremony, the Academy and the Oscar producers opted to use the open spaces of Union Station, a downtown train station that will be the first such venue to host an Oscars.
