33rd Academy Awards: History and Background

The 33rd Academy Awards, honoring the best in film for 1960, were held on April 17, 1961, hosted by Bob Hope at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Santa Monica, California. This was the first ceremony to be aired on ABC television, which has aired the Academy Awards ever since (except between 1971 and 1975, when they were aired on NBC for the first time since the previous year).

Billy Wilder's The Apartment won Best Picture, the last black-and-white film to do so until Schindler's List and The Artist at the 66th and 84th Academy Awards, respectively.

Elizabeth Taylor, who had a near-fatal bout with pneumonia a short time before the ceremony, was viewed as having received her Oscar out of sympathy rather than for her performance in BUtterfield 8.

Gary Cooper was selected by the Academy Board of Governors to receive an Academy Honorary Award "for his many memorable screen performances and the international recognition he, as an individual, has gained for the motion picture industry". Cooper was too ill to attend the ceremony, though his condition was not publicly disclosed; James Stewart, a close friend of Cooper, accepted the Oscar on his behalf. Stewart's emotional speech hinted that something was seriously wrong, and the following day newspapers ran the headline, "Gary Cooper has cancer". Cooper died less than four weeks later.

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