A closer look
The most glamorous night in Hollywood history was originally designed strictly as a corporate suppression tactic. In the 1920s, ruthless studio executives were deeply terrified of rising labor movements demanding fair pay for heavily overworked technical crews and actors. Louis B. Mayer fundamentally established the Academy as a completely fake union strictly controlled by studio bosses to tightly mediate vicious labor disputes internally. The shiny golden awards were merely instituted to heavily flatter massive egos, successfully distracting elite stars from formally joining organized labor strikes.
