The shining Oscar statuette is a celebrated symbol of the Academy Awards, but there is another icon on the Oscars scene.
Weighing a quarter of a pound and seen by millions of viewers around the world, it’s the Oscar envelope.
It bears, after all, the Oscar winner’s name.
The golden envelope was initially developed as a safeguard against leaks to the media of the winners’ names. Yet the envelope holds some secrets of its own. Here are six little-known facts about the famous Oscar envelope, which has emerged as an Oscars emblem in its own right.
The envelope is younger than Oscar
Although Sunday’s Oscars extravaganza marks the 87th Academy Awards, the envelope is celebrating only its 75th birthday.
When the Oscars began in 1929, the winners were announced three months prior to their triumphs. That changed in 1930, when the Academy distributed the list to the press with a strict embargo for publication until 11 p.m. on the night of the ceremony.
Unfortunately for the Academy in 1939, The Los Angeles Times got a bit anxious and leaked the winners list before the announcements were made, said Marc Friedland, the Los Angeles-based designer of the current Oscars envelope.
–
Only 24 of 72 original envelopes survive annually
Although 72 envelopes are made, only 24 make it to the Oscars stage.
The winner of each category takes home both a golden statuette and the shimmering winning envelope, but the extra sets of envelopes are destroyed.
The elimination is to prevent leftovers from popping up on eBay or celebrity auction sites and to preserve the prestige of the iconic relics, Friedland said.
Although each envelope costs about $200 to produce, its value as a memento is priceless, Friedland said.
“Fifty years from now, hopefully a winner who looks back at their envelope will recapture that moment in time when everybody was watching, and they announced in that millisecond who the Oscar winner was,” Friedland said. “It really becomes a keepsake that will last a lifetime.”
CNN’s Michael Martinez contributed to this report.
