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Looking back on the first Oscars as Hollywood’s biggest night nears

Take No. 98 of the Oscars

Hark! On March 15, at 7 p.m., ABC’s 98th Oscars thing, burbled by Conan O’Brien, starts — three weeks away. Oy, be still my heart. The awards originally began in 1929. Underwhelmed, Time magazine gave it one paragraph afterward. Same page, only larger paragraph, John D. Rockefeller III was reported “to have just been voted the third most pious” by his Princeton class. Also on the same page was info on a new Ford factory being built in England.

What could be better for California? It’s almost as great as giving a 2-year-old girl a GI wardrobe.

The venue? Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The 270 who paid to attend spent $5. Another fin and you could’ve owned the whole hotel. The dress — black tie. No close-ups of boobs and behinds.

The whole ceremony, which had 13 awards, took 15 minutes. The reasoning? To cement Hollywood, to canonize the industry, to hype movie-making.

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The oddity? Winners’ names had already been announced months earlier, so nobody understood why they schlepped to this event in the first place. The prizes got awarded in five minutes. Swallowing your gin and tonic while you smiled at losers took longer.

Douglas Fairbanks was the event’s president and the first host. Janet Gaynor won for something.

Realtime bigtime movietime biggies who were at the first Oscars? Emil Jannings.

Anyway, by 1940, everybody, including waiters, were tired of the thing and needed to wake up the audience, so in came the Great Hope: Bob Hope. He holds the record for hosting the most Oscars — 19 times — and emceed the event in 1953 for its first televised event, and in 1966 for the first broadcast in color.

A few memorable quotes from Oscar-winning actors.

Morgan Freeman: “An overzealous guy once followed me into the men’s room for an autograph. So I finally asked him: ‘You want to hold this while I sign?’ ”

Hilary Swank: “First role I ever auditioned for was to play an animal. It was Bagheera, the black panther in ‘The Jungle Book.’ The director then put his arm around me and said, ‘Hilary, we need to talk.’ ”

Natalie Portman: “Prince Charles once asked me if I’d been in ‘Star Wars Phantom Menace.’ I didn’t mind because it could’ve been an upsetting experience, but I was only 12.” 

Subsequently, little glitches. 1984’s “Amadeus” showed Mozart worked to overcome an envious fellow composer, which smart-asses said was “bulls - - t.” 1965’s “The Sound of Music” depicted the terrified Von Trapp family fleeing the Nazis by hiking over the Alps, when the real Von Trapp family just hopped a train. Though the movie was a hit at the Academy Awards the next year.

Much later Harvey Weinstein was once hot to film J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye.” But Salinger wasn’t interested. Harvey had said: “Just put me in a room with that guy and I’ll get those rights.” Legal rights, however, have since put Harvey in his own tiny room.

LISTEN, I have to finish now because as I’m typing, this winter is here all over our streets.

One thing. And I know nothing. But, please, will the Nancy Guthrie investigators check Mexico. Types down there know things, do things. Get out of your same terrain . . . go to Mexico.

Cindy Adams Looking back on the first Oscars as Hollywood's biggest night nears

Looking back on the first Oscars as Hollywood's biggest night nears

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