Sunrise and Janet Gaynor

The first Academy Awards ceremony saw not one, but two films honored with Best Picture awards. The first, of course, was Wings, the aerial tour de force starring Clara Bow and Charles 'Buddy' Rogers. The second, and the least known of the two, was Sunrise.

The honor bestowed upon Wings was called Best Picture, Production. For Sunrise, it was called Best Picture, Unique and Artistic Production. These awards were combined in the second year, and Academy history forever considered Wings to be the Best Picture the first year out, with the reason being, that is was honored for its overall production, and not just artistic merit.

This didn't bode well over the years for Sunrise fans who continually cite this as being a cinematic masterpiece. In the 1950's, the French magazine, Cahiers du Cinema was still listing it as their favorite film of all time.

Perhaps Sunrise represented the times better than any other film of 1927, particularly Wings. The story about a man who plots to kill his wife with his mistress, is symbolic of the changing attitudes about women back then, as it is of the force that was in place to hold them back. Janet Gaynor played the sweet and innocent country wife, while Margaret Livingston played the evil vamp from the city. George O'Brian is the husband, torn between his love and his lust.

Janet Gaynor was excellent in the lead role, playing the wife. At 22 years old, she was a hot property, playing sweet, virginal characters in a host of popular films. The films director, F.W. Murnau, was already a well respected name, particularly for his bizarre creation, Nosferatu in 1924.

For the Academy, Sunrise was a chance to show - right off the bat - that the awards were not an exclusive affair.

Mary Pickford, a founding member of the Academy, referred to the club as a 'league of nations', and the awards were to reflect that. German born F.W. Murnau was not a member of the Academy, which made him a perfect candidate for the award. This win would give the Academy an air of integrity that it dearly needed if it was to get off the ground.

Meanwhile, accusations ran rampant that Louis B. Mayer had some form of control over the awards ceremony. MGM's big film that year was The Crowd, and studio boss Mayer was determined to see it not win! According to the films director, King Vidor, 'he didn't vote for it because it wasn't a big money maker'. But Mayer also hated the film, calling it 'unglamorous' and feeling that it didn't represent his studio well.

Mayer's dictatorial rule hurt MGM's chances of getting any awards that first year, except for one for Title Writing for a film called Telling the World., In the end, Paramount's Wings and Fox's Sunrise earned the biggest awards.

The first ever Best Actress winner was Janet Gaynor for three films, Street Angel, Seventh Heaven, and Sunrise.

According to Gaynor, "the first awards was just a small group getting together for a pat on the back." She went on, "It was more like a private party than a big public occasion. It wasn't open to anyone but Academy members and as you danced you saw the most important people in Hollywood whirling past you."

Gaynor admitted to film historian, Robert Osbourne, that the awards show was really no big deal that first year, saying that 'it naturally doesn't mean what it means now. Had I known then what it would come to mean in the next few years, I'm sure I'd have been overwhelmed. At the time, I think I was more thrilled over meeting Doug Fairbanks."