By Ed Symkus

An author with a deep affinity for and knowledge of movies and how they’re honored tells us all about Oscar.

The Academy and the Award: The Coming of Age of Oscar and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences by Bruce Davis. Brandeis University Press, 500 pp., $40 (hardcover)

If you’re going to tackle a book subject that’s as iconic and history-laden as Hollywood’s absurdly popular golden statuette — yes, the Oscar — you’d better know your stuff. Author Bruce Davis knows his stuff, not only because movies are one of his passions, but because before retiring in 2011, he had been on the staff of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for 30 years, 20 of them as the organization’s executive director.

A journey through his complicated story of how the Academy and its renowned prize came to be and have fared over the years also shows that, beyond a wealth of personal knowledge Davis is champing to share, he has a fondness for research, and he has delved into the deep end of it.

Know at the outset that this is not a book for pop culture fans or general movie buffs. It’s more for cinema historians. There’s a lot of focus on the internal structure of the Academy and how it adapted with the times. Also, it sticks primarily with the first three decades of Academy history. The idea for the organization is credited to MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer, who dreamed it up in 1926. Early talks among its architects in 1927 resulted in a Statement of Purpose — “for all creative branches of the motion picture industry to organize for the common benefit, welfare, and progress of the industry” — and a plan for the Academy to be made up of five branches: actors, directors, writers, technicians, and producers. Those denizens of Hollywood liked the idea, feeling that it would “help elevate public perception of movies as an art form.”

Among the different roles the Academy would assume were assisting members with work-related issues, finding ways to attain uniformity in the fast-changing industry (including the move to sound and improvement in lighting and theatrical projection), and creating and bestowing awards for outstanding achievements in the world of movies.

The presentation of that prize, long known as an Oscar, but initially referred to as an award of merit, started out as just an item on the agenda of the Academy’s annual meeting. But, reasons Davis, it really was and still is the act of “an arts organization conducting its most important bit of annual business.”

Throughout 500 pages, Davis explores myriad people and events who shaped (and regularly reshaped) how the Academy worked, taking into consideration its successes, failures, and challenges.

A big chunk is donated to the challenge named Will H. Hays, the first chairman of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, who took it upon himself to clean up — that is, censor — what he considered objectionable material in films. Two things are made clear: He wielded a lot of power, and he was not well liked in Hollywood.

There’s also a section on how the weighty issue of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his reprehensible actions with the House Un-American Activities Committee affected the business, which seems to have been a stretch for Davis to get across. The most relevant part of his telling of it doesn’t happen until the 1999 awards ceremony, when director Elia Kazan — who had named names in 1952 — was to receive an honorary Oscar, and became a center of controversy.

One of the more amusing stories attempts to get to the bottom of how Oscar got his name. Davis fills it out with lots of twists and turns, truths and lies, and, alas, no concrete answer.

One of the more peculiar stories involves problems the organization had with trademarking the term Academy Award. They’d been around since the late-1920s, but no one had remembered to deal with that simple task. When a situation arose that called for proof of it in 1948, it was discovered that nine years earlier, a company called Schnur and Cohan had registered it, and was selling Academy Awards-brand women’s underwear.

Though the book has a few dry patches — specifics on growing pains involving labor issues and the constant changing of rules on membership and voting — Davis keeps things both informative and entertaining with plenty of interesting factoids.

For instance, the Academy’s first president was Douglas Fairbanks; while acting in Frankenstein, Boris Karloff made $91.66 per day; three people (not just Marlon Brando and George C. Scott) have turned down their Oscars (the first was Dudley Nichols, for his screenplay of the 1935 crime drama The Informer); during the inaugural ceremony in 1929, a one-time-only award went to Joseph W. Farnham for his scripting of intertitles in silent films.

Davis goes on to feature details on senseless monetary strife between the Academy and film studios, when they should have been scratching each other’s backs; follows the transformation of the awards ceremony from dinner gatherings to radio and then television broadcasts; and appears to be getting an unexplained personal issue off his chest when, in reporting on a 1954 ceremony, he mentions Judy Garland sitting at a table “with her scorpion of a husband, Sid Luft.”

The ending, referencing the state of the Academy today, and the dwindling viewership of the Oscarcast, is a bit gloomy. But Davis again points out that the book is mostly a history of just the Academy’s first few decades. He hopes a future book, bringing things up to date, will close with a more positive outlook.

Ed Symkus is a Boston native and Emerson College graduate. He went to Woodstock, is a fan of Harry Crews, Sax Rohmer, and John Wyndham, and has visited the Outer Hebrides, the Lofoten Islands, Anglesey, Mykonos, the Azores, Catalina, Kangaroo Island, and the Isle of Capri with his wife Lisa.