Golden Globe Awards

Based on Wikipedia: Golden Globe Awards

The Awards Show That Almost Died

In the summer of 2021, Tom Cruise did something extraordinary. He gathered up his three Golden Globe trophies—won over decades for Born on the Fourth of July, Jerry Maguire, and Magnolia—and sent them back.

The gesture was symbolic, but the message was clear: something had gone deeply wrong with Hollywood's second-most-famous awards ceremony. Netflix and Amazon announced they would cut ties with the organization. NBC, which had broadcast the show for over sixty years, declared it wouldn't air the 2022 ceremony. The Golden Globes, for a moment, seemed destined to become a historical footnote.

How did an awards show that had been a fixture of Hollywood since 1944 find itself on the brink of irrelevance? And how did it manage to crawl back?

A Peculiar Origin Story

The Golden Globes were never supposed to rival the Oscars. They started as something much humbler: a promotional vehicle for foreign journalists trying to make their mark in Hollywood.

In 1943, a group of Los Angeles–based foreign correspondents formed the Hollywood Foreign Correspondent Association. These weren't the power brokers of the film industry. They were reporters working for newspapers and magazines in other countries, trying to gather and distribute entertainment news to audiences back home. They had an idea: what if they created their own awards ceremony? It would give them access to stars, generate stories to file, and maybe—just maybe—earn them some respect in a town that didn't take them particularly seriously.

The first Golden Globe Awards ceremony took place in January 1944 at the 20th Century-Fox studios, honoring the best achievements in filmmaking from the previous year. The Oscars had been running since 1929, so this new ceremony was entering crowded territory. But the foreign journalists had stumbled onto something valuable. Hollywood studios quickly realized that these awards, voted on by international press, could help promote their films overseas. Suddenly, the Golden Globes mattered.

The Henrietta, the Angel, and the Naked Woman

The early history of the Golden Globes involves a fair amount of organizational chaos that sounds almost comical in hindsight.

In 1950, some journalists broke away from the original group to form a rival organization called the Foreign Press Association of Hollywood. This splinter group created their own award: the Henrietta, named after their president Henry Gris. The trophy depicted an angel hovering above a globe, raised on four tall pillars.

Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman won the first Henriettas for "World Film Favorite" in January 1951.

Then things got strange. At the second ceremony in 1952, the Henrietta trophy was completely redesigned—now it was a large statuette of a naked woman holding a flower. Alan Ladd and Esther Williams won gold Henriettas, while silver versions went to rising stars including a young actress named Marilyn Monroe for "Best Young Box Office Personality."

The original group, meanwhile, kept holding their Golden Globe Awards. They also created a special honorary award in 1950 to recognize outstanding contributions to the entertainment industry. The first recipient was Cecil B. DeMille, the legendary director and producer behind films like The Ten Commandments. The award was subsequently named after him, and the Cecil B. DeMille Award became one of the most prestigious honors in Hollywood—a lifetime achievement recognition that has since gone to luminaries from Alfred Hitchcock to Oprah Winfrey.

In 1954, the two rival organizations finally held a joint ceremony, and the following year they merged under a new name: the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, or HFPA. The Henrietta Award was absorbed into the new organization, eventually becoming the "World Film Favorite" Golden Globe until it was discontinued in 1980.

The Television Question

For its first decade, the Golden Globes focused exclusively on film. But by the mid-1950s, television had become impossible to ignore. Families across America were gathering around their living room screens, and the new medium was producing stars of its own.

The 13th Golden Globe Awards in February 1956 marked a turning point: the ceremony gave out its first award for television achievement. Six years later, in 1962, three permanent TV categories debuted—Best TV Series, Best TV Actor, and Best TV Actress.

This decision proved prescient. As the decades passed, television evolved from a somewhat disreputable medium (film stars used to be embarrassed to appear on TV) to the dominant form of American storytelling. Today, with streaming services producing prestige dramas that rival theatrical films in quality and ambition, the Golden Globes' television categories have arguably become more relevant than ever.

Miss Golden Globe and Her Transformation

Beginning in 1963, the Golden Globes introduced a curious tradition: "Miss Golden Globe," a young woman who would assist in presenting the trophies during the ceremony. The position traditionally went to the daughter of a celebrity, and it became a peculiar point of pride among Hollywood families—a kind of debutante ball for the industry's next generation.

For over fifty years, this tradition continued largely unchanged. Then, on January 5, 2018, the title was renamed to "Golden Globe Ambassador." The change reflected shifting cultural attitudes about gender roles, and the position was opened to sons of celebrities as well. The rechristening coincided with the broader #MeToo and Time's Up movements that were reshaping Hollywood's self-image.

The Peculiar Economics of Hollywood Awards

To understand what happened to the Golden Globes in 2021, you need to understand something about how the awards industry actually works.

Awards ceremonies generate money in several ways. There are television broadcasting rights, which can be worth tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. There's advertising revenue. There are sponsorship deals. And there's something more nebulous but equally valuable: influence over which films and shows get attention, and therefore which ones make money.

Studios spend enormous sums on "awards campaigns," hosting screenings, flying voters to luxurious events, and generally doing everything possible to ensure their productions receive favorable consideration. A Golden Globe nomination can translate into millions of dollars in additional box office revenue. A win can mean even more.

The HFPA, as the voting body, sat at the center of this money flow. The organization used its revenues to fund scholarships for aspiring filmmakers, support the Young Artist Awards (which recognize performers under 21), and contribute to various entertainment-related charities. But questions had long swirled about the organization's operations, its membership criteria, and its vulnerability to influence from studios eager to curry favor.

The Reckoning

In early 2021, the Los Angeles Times published an investigation revealing that the HFPA had no Black members among its approximately 90 journalists. Zero.

This wasn't just embarrassing—it was damning. How could a group with no Black members credibly evaluate films and performances by Black artists? The revelation came at a particularly charged moment, following the racial justice protests of 2020 and an increasingly vocal film industry conversation about diversity and representation.

The HFPA announced reform plans on May 3, 2021: a 50% increase in membership over eighteen months, new management positions, term limits, improved accountability measures. But critics, including the advocacy organization Time's Up and a coalition of 100 public relations firms, argued the reforms were too vague and too slow. They wouldn't meaningfully change anything before the next awards ceremony in January 2022.

Four days later, the dominoes began to fall.

Amazon Studios announced it would suspend all activities with the HFPA. Netflix followed immediately. Then, on May 10, NBC dropped the bomb: it would not broadcast the 79th Golden Globe Awards. WarnerMedia joined the boycott. Tom Cruise returned his trophies.

The Golden Globes, an institution that had survived World War II, the collapse of the studio system, the rise of television, and countless Hollywood transformations, suddenly faced an existential crisis.

The Quiet Ceremony

The 79th Golden Globe Awards took place on January 9, 2022, but you probably didn't see it. There was no red carpet. No celebrity presenters. No television broadcast. The ceremony was conducted as a private event with strict COVID-19 protocols (the Omicron variant was surging) and limited attendance, primarily beneficiaries of the HFPA's charitable work.

Winners were announced via social media. It was, by any measure, a humiliating comedown for an awards show that had once been watched by tens of millions of viewers worldwide.

The Corporate Takeover

Behind the scenes, a major restructuring was underway.

Todd Boehly, a billionaire investor whose holding company Eldridge Industries owned Dick Clark Productions (which had produced the Golden Globes telecast since 1993), had been named the HFPA's interim CEO during the crisis. In July 2022, the HFPA approved a radical solution: the Golden Globe Awards would become a for-profit entity under Eldridge Industries, while the organization's charitable activities would continue separately as a non-profit called the Golden Globe Foundation.

In other words, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association was being stripped of its most valuable asset.

The restructuring promised "professionalization and modernization" of the ceremony, including expanding and diversifying the voter pool. NBC agreed to a one-year deal to broadcast the 80th Golden Globe Awards on January 10, 2023—notably moved to a Tuesday evening to avoid conflicts with NFL games and the College Football Playoff.

On June 12, 2023, the transformation became complete. Dick Clark Productions and Eldridge Industries acquired the Golden Globe Awards' assets and intellectual property. The HFPA, the organization that had created and run the awards for nearly eighty years, was effectively out of the picture.

How the Voting Actually Works

The Golden Globes' voting process, while less Byzantine than the Academy Awards', has its own distinctive features.

Films must be at least seventy minutes long and released for at least a seven-day theatrical run in the Greater Los Angeles area before midnight on December 31. They can also qualify through pay-per-view or digital release—a concession to the streaming era that would have been unthinkable decades ago.

The Best Foreign Language Film category has slightly different rules. Films don't need a U.S. release to qualify; they just need to be released in their country of origin during a fourteen-month window. At least 51% of the dialogue must be in a language other than English. There's no limit on how many films a single country can submit, unlike the Oscars' one-per-country rule.

Television shows must air during prime time hours in the United States—between 8 PM and 11 PM on most nights, or 7 PM to 11 PM on Sundays. Reality shows and unscripted programming don't qualify. Actors in TV series must appear in at least six episodes during the calendar year to be eligible; actors in miniseries or TV movies must appear in at least 5% of the total runtime.

The nomination process uses a weighted ranking system. Each voter selects their top five choices in each category, numbering them 5 (best) down to 1. The five selections that receive the most votes become the nominees, with the ranking used only to break ties. Final winners are then selected by simple plurality vote among the nominees.

As of 2024, the voting body consists of 310 individuals representing 76 countries—a dramatic expansion from the roughly 90 HFPA members who previously controlled the process.

The Third-Biggest Show in Town

Despite its troubles, the Golden Globes has traditionally ranked as the third-most-watched awards show in the world, behind only the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards. The ceremony broadcasts to 167 countries, making it a genuinely global event in a way that many American awards shows are not.

The show's appeal has always been partly about its atmosphere. Unlike the relatively staid Oscars, the Golden Globes serve alcohol. Winners give looser, more spontaneous speeches. The round tables create a dinner-party vibe that encourages mingling and produces memorable candid moments.

This informality extended to the hosting situation for many years. Until 2010, the Golden Globes rotated through different presenters each year rather than having a consistent host—one of only two major Hollywood ceremonies (along with the Screen Actors Guild Awards) to do so. Then Ricky Gervais arrived.

Gervais's caustic humor—he openly mocked celebrities, studios, and Hollywood hypocrisy—proved ratings gold. He hosted in 2010, 2011, and 2012, then returned for additional stints in 2016 and 2020. His final hosting appearance, just months before the HFPA scandal broke, included jokes about the organization's ethical issues that seemed eerily prescient.

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler brought a different energy, hosting from 2013 through 2015 with a combination of wit and warmth that reminded viewers why they liked awards shows in the first place.

The Carol Burnett Award

In 2019, the Golden Globes created a new lifetime achievement honor for television: the Carol Burnett Award, named after its first recipient.

Carol Burnett represents something that's increasingly rare in entertainment: a career that spans the entire history of television. Her variety show, The Carol Burnett Show, ran from 1967 to 1978 and helped define what television comedy could be. She won numerous Emmys, Golden Globes, and eventually became one of those performers whose name itself represents an era.

The new award serves as a television counterpart to the Cecil B. DeMille Award for film—a recognition that television has produced its own pantheon of legends deserving similar honor.

The Statuette Itself

The Golden Globe trophy has been redesigned multiple times over the decades. The current version emerged from a 2009 collaboration between the HFPA and Society Awards, a New York-based firm. The redesigned statuette features a unique marble base and enhanced gold content—a upgrade meant to convey permanence and prestige.

The trophy depicts a golden globe (naturally) encircled by a strip of film. It's simpler and less iconic than Oscar's faceless golden man, but that may be appropriate for an award that has always positioned itself as Hollywood's more relaxed, more international alternative.

What the Future Holds

The Golden Globes in 2024 and beyond operate under fundamentally different circumstances than the ceremony that began in 1944. The voting body has expanded dramatically. Corporate ownership has replaced journalist governance. The HFPA name lives on only through the philanthropic foundation that continues its charitable work.

Whether these changes represent a genuine reformation or merely a rebranding remains an open question. The awards themselves continue: trophies are still handed out in January, winners still give speeches, and the ceremony still attracts viewers hoping to see their favorite stars in formal wear.

But something has undeniably changed. The Golden Globes were founded on the idea that a small group of foreign journalists could create their own seat at Hollywood's table. They succeeded beyond any reasonable expectation, building an institution that shaped careers and influenced billions of dollars in box office returns. Then the contradictions inherent in that arrangement—the tiny, unaccountable membership; the vulnerability to influence; the lack of diversity—caught up with them.

The ceremony survived, but the organization that created it did not. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which gave the world the Golden Globes, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and decades of awards season drama, has been reduced to a charitable foundation that no longer controls its most famous creation.

In Hollywood, even institutions get second acts. Whether this one will be a comeback or merely a postscript remains to be written.