History of the Golden Globes

While you may already know about the Golden Globes award ceremony, you might not be aware of its humble beginnings. Today’s Golden Globes usually consist of popular movie and TV show stars mingling together and receiving awards for their achievements at a luxurious venue in Hollywood.  

However, this process looked much different in the first golden globes. The first Golden Globes took place on January 20, 1944 at 20th Century Fox Studios.  

• Instead of the trophies that stars get today, winners received an honorary scroll.  

• Some winners of the night included celebrities such as Paul Lukas, Katina Paxinou, and Jennifer Jones.  

• The black and white film “The Song of Bernadette” was awarded the title of “best picture”. 

• The famed event itself was created by a group of journalists from overseas based in Los Angeles in 1943 and was led by the former correspondent of the British tabloid Britain’s Daily Mail as a way for international journalists to gain access to Hollywood stars.  

• Together, the team of journalists formed the “Hollywood Foreign Press Association”. 

•  The association’s motto was the phrase “Unity without discrimination of religion or race”.  

• The HFPA held its first formal event in 1945, at the Beverly Hills Hotel.  The movie “Going my way” won an award for best picture that year.  

• The Golden Globe award trophy that we see stars holding on stage while saying their acceptance speeches was first seen in the 1946 Golden Globes, when the president of the HFPA, Marina Cisternas thought of the idea of having a trophy of a “golden globe” encircled by a film strip.  

The Golden Globe awards have come a long way from 1944 to 2023 and have gone through drastic changes throughout this process, but the tradition itself is timeless and will continue to entertain viewers in many years to come.