2023 Golden Globes

In the 1950s, there were a few years when multiple films were awarded the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film (now Best Non-English Language Film), and 1955 was one of those years. The 12th Golden Globes were held on February 24, 1955, at the Ambassador Hotel, and, befitting the organization’s international roots, four foreign films were voted the winners by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.

The 1954 awards were held jointly by the Hollywood Foreign Correspondents Association (HFCA) and the Foreign Press Association of Hollywood (FPAH), the two organizations that in 1955 would merge to form the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA). The invitation came from the International Press of Hollywood, presenting the Golden Globe and World Film Favorites Awards for 1953, and took place on Friday, January 22, 1954, at Club Casa Del Mar in Santa Monica.

The year 1952 was a banner one for musicals, and the 10th Annual Golden Globes, held on February 26, 1953, at the Ambassador Hotel, celebrated five of the best as nominees for Best Motion Picture Comedy or Musical. The Golden Globe winner, director Walter Lang’s With a Song in My Heart, is a biographical musical based on the life of singer Jane Froman, who suffered massive injuries in an airplane crash on her way to a USO tour during World War II.

The Golden Globe Awards, in their early years, were a less formal affair than they have been since 1971 when they started being hosted in the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel. In 1952, the event was held for the second straight year at Ciro’s, a popular nightclub on the Sunset Strip.

Hollywood, so goes an old adage, loves movies about Hollywood. And most critics and film lovers agree: To this day, there is none better than Sunset Boulevard.

In the room devoted to a Spike Lee exhibit at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, which opened to the public in 2021, there hang three posters of movies that inspired the lauded director: Breathless (1960), by Jean-Luc Godard; Seven Beauties (1975), by Lina Wertmüller; and The Bicycle Thief (1948), by Vittorio De Sica. The Bicycle Thief was the very first movie to win a Golden Globe as Best Foreign Language Film, in a ceremony held February 23, 1950, in the Embassy Room of the Ambassador Hotel, the 1950 Golden Globes.

It’s happened only once in the history of the Golden Globes: A father and his son each won the golden statuette for their individual work on the same film. This singular event took place on March 16, 1949, at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

Walt Disney received several special awards in the early days of the Golden Globes. The first came in 1948, for Furthering the Influence of the Screen, after he co-created the cartoon character of Mickey Mouse in 1928 and produced animated classics like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940), Dumbo (1941), and.

By 1947, the fledgling Hollywood Foreign Correspondents Association (HFCA), founded a few years earlier by a little more than a dozen international journalists, had slowly expanded. There had been relatively informal celebrations of achievements in film, mostly small gatherings with the attendance of the prize winners.

At the 3rd Golden Globes ceremony, held Saturday, March 30, 1946, at the Hollywood Knickerbocker Club, a special award was given to Frank Sinatra by the Hollywood Foreign Correspondents Association (HFCA), which in 1955 merged with the Foreign Press Association of Hollywood (FPAH) to form the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA). The award, for the Picture With the Best International Feeling, honored the 1945 short film The House I Live In, directed by Mervyn LeRoy.