All you need to know: 5th Governors Awards (2013)

Angela Lansbury, Steve Martin, Piero Tosi and Angelina Jolie will be honored tonight. All four will receive Oscar statuettes. This is the honorary Academy Awards — the 5th Annual Governors Awards, an untelevised, dinner event put on by the Academy to bestow its testimonial awards.

By James A. Molnar
TGK Editor

Angela Lansbury, Steve Martin, Piero Tosi and Angelina Jolie will be honored tonight. All four will receive Oscar statuettes. This is the honorary Academy Awards — the 5th Annual Governors Awards, an untelevised, dinner event put on by the Academy to bestow its testimonial awards.

More intimate and slower-paced than the Brobdingnagian ceremony in February (or March, as is the case next year), the Governors Awards honors no more than four industry professionals and allows for lengthly video tributes, along with casual toasting and introductions by closely-connected friends and colleagues of honorees.

The Board of Governors of the Academy voted Sept. 3 to present Honorary Awards to Angela Lansbury, Steve Martin and Piero Tosi. Angelina Jolie will receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

The 48 governors (which increased by five this year) were allowed to nominate as many living people as they wanted. The list of candidates generally numbers at least 10, TheWrap's Steve Pond reported last year.

The announcement was delayed more than 24 hours because the Academy wanted to contact all of the honorees before sending out the news. As of Wednesday night, the Academy still needed to get in touch with one of the honorees, according to The Hollywood Reporter's Scott Feinberg on Twitter.

Each governor casts a secret vote. The nominee with the largest number of votes then moves to a second round of voting, where each governor votes for or against that person's candidacy. If more than half the board votes yes, the Oscar is awarded.

The process continues until three awards are voted. The fourth and final candidate must receive yes votes from three-fourths of the governors to receive an award, according to Pond.

I'm proud to win an honorary Oscar this year. A salute to comedy and all the great people I've worked with. http://t.co/0XDAZd5pWs
— Steve Martin (@SteveMartinToGo) September 5, 2013

The honorees
On Saturday, Nov. 16, a black-tie dinner event at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland Center to celebrate the careers of Lansbury, Martin, Tosi and Jolie.

Here are the honorees’ biographies provided by the Academy:

Actress Angela Lansbury.
Photo courtesyEverett Collection and The Academy.

Lansbury has received three Academy Award nominations for her supporting performances on film – the first in her 1944 feature debut in “Gaslight,” followed by “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (1945) and “The Manchurian Candidate” (1962). Her numerous other credits include “The Long, Hot Summer,” “Blue Hawaii,” “The World of Henry Orient,” “Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” “Death on the Nile” and “Mr. Popper’s Penguins,” as well as voice work for the first animated feature to receive a Best Picture nomination, “Beauty and the Beast.”

Actor and comedian Steve Martin.
Photo courtesy Everett Collection and The Academy.

Martin, who got his start in television, is a versatile actor, writer, comedian and musician who began to display the breadth of his big-screen talent as the screenwriter and star of the 1977 Oscar-nominated short film “The Absent-Minded Waiter.” He wrote and starred in “The Jerk,” “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid,” “Three Amigos,” “Roxanne,” “L.A. Story,” “The Pink Panther” series and “Shopgirl,” which he adapted from his critically acclaimed book of the same name. His other acting credits include “All of Me,” “Parenthood,” “Father of the Bride” and “It’s Complicated.” He also is a three-time host of the Oscars, most recently in 2010 with Alec Baldwin.

Costume designer Piero Tosi.
Photo courtesy The Academy.

Tosi rose to prominence through his collaborations with Italian director Luchino Visconti on such films as “White Nights” and “Rocco and His Brothers,” and continued to work with him on several other features, including the Costume Design nominees “The Leopard,” “Death in Venice” and “Ludwig.” Tosi received two more nominations for his designs for “La Cage aux Folles” and “La Traviata.” His other notable credits include “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” a Foreign Language Film winner, and “Marriage Italian Style,” a Foreign Language Film nominee, both directed by Vittorio De Sica.

Humanitarian and actress
Angelina Jolie.
Photo courtesy UNHCR.

Jolie, who won an Oscar for her supporting performance in “Girl, Interrupted,” has been an impassioned advocate for humanitarian causes, traveling widely to promote organizations and social justice efforts such as the Prevent Sexual Violence Initiative. Staking out a career at the nexus of entertainment and philanthropy, Jolie has worked for a number of global advocacy groups including the Council on Foreign Relations and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), for which she was appointed Special Envoy of High Commissioner António Guterres in 2012 after twelve years of service. Her dedication to these causes has also shaped her work in films that tackle global humanitarian issues including “A Mighty Heart” and her feature film directorial debut “In the Land of Blood and Honey.”

The Honorary Award, an Oscar statuette, is given to an individual for “extraordinary distinction in lifetime achievement, exceptional contributions to the state of motion picture arts and sciences, or for outstanding service to the Academy.”

The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, an Oscar statuette, is given to an individual whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the motion picture industry.

Past honorees

Last year at the 4th Governors Awards, held later than normal, on Dec. 1, recognized Hollywood stuntman Hal Needham, along with documentarian D.A. Pennebaker and filmmaker-arts advocate George Stevens, Jr., with Honorary Awards. DreamWorks Animation chief and philanthropist Jeffrey Katzenberg received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Each received Oscar statuettes.

At the 3rd Governors Awards, Honorary Awards were presented to actor James Earl Jones and makeup artist Dick Smith (pictured) and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award went to philanthropist Oprah Winfrey.

At the 2nd Governors Awards, held Nov. 13, 2010, producer-director Francis Ford Coppola received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award and Honorary Awards (pictured below) went to historian and preservationist Kevin Brownlow, director Jean-Luc Godard and actor Eli Wallach.

Honorees at the inaugural Governors Awards, held Nov. 14, 2009, were producer-executive John Calley (Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award) actress Lauren Bacall, producer-director Roger Corman and cinematographer Gordon Willis. The latter three received Honorary Awards.

Other previous recipients were Jerry Lewis (Hersholt Award) at the 81st Academy Awards in February 2009, Robert Boyle (Honorary Award) at the 80th Academy Awards in February 2008 and Dino De Laurentiis (Thalberg Award) at the 73rd Academy Awards in March 2001.

The Board of Governors of the Academy voted in June 2009 to establish the Governors Awards, an annual event dedicated to presenting its testimonial awards – the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and the Honorary Award. Honorees are selected and announced in September and presented their awards in November. They are also acknowledged at the following Academy Awards ceremony.

The producer

Paula Wagner was named producer for 5th Governors Awards in September by Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs, a past producer of the awards ceremony herself.

“Paula’s expertise, coupled with her love for film, makes her the ideal person to produce this special event,” Boone Isaacs said in a statement. “She is certain to deliver an exciting and memorable evening for our honorees and guests.”

Wagner's producing credits include more than 20 feature films, including the first three “Mission: Impossible” films and “Vanilla Sky,” as well as the television film “Five” and three Broadway plays.

She currently produces film and theater through her company Chestnut Ridge Productions. Wagner is also an adjunct professor at her alma mater, Carnegie Mellon University, and lectures at universities around the nation.

Wagner is a member of the Academy, the Producers Guild of America and The Broadway League. She also sits on the boards of the PGA, the Film Forum, American Cinematheque and the National Film Preservation Foundation.

Last year's producers were Boone Issacs, along with Don Mischer, Charlie Haykel and Juliane Hare. Other past producers for the Governors Awards have included writer-director Phil Robinson, former Academy president Sid Ganis and Academy Award-winning producer Bruce Cohen, who went on to co-produce the 83rd Academy Awards telecast.

Full coverage
Live coverage of the ceremony tonight is available via the Academy’s twitter account. The Gold Knight will recap the night tomorrow, along with the fashion.

More information about the Governors Awards can be found on the Academy website.

Read a recap past years: 4th Annual, 3rd Annual, 2nd Annual.

The 86th Academy Awards, for outstanding film achievements of 2013, will be presented on Sunday, March 2, 2014, at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center, and will be televised live on ABC and in more than 225 countries worldwide.