Why did the Academy create an Oscar category that no one has ever won?

The first Academy Awards ceremony was held on May 16, 1929, at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, California. At that time, there were 12 categories, some separated by gender. Instead of just one category for Best Picture, there was an award for Outstanding Picture and an award for Best Artistic and Unique Picture. William Wellman’s “Wings” won Best Picture, and is considered by many to be the equivalent of 1929’s Best Picture award. However, the artistic picture went to F.W. Murnau’s “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans.” This must be counted historically at least as much as the “wings”.

The first Academy Awards also included two categories for directing (one for comedies and one for drama), and three categories for writing (original screenplay, adapted screenplay, and title writing). A lot has changed over the last 95 years of Oscar history.

However, no category has undergone more name changes and modifications than the original Best Score category. There are so many ways to define and classify atypical film music that the Academy has stumbled in trying to keep up. For many years, the Academy separated scoring categories for musicals and non-musicals, sometimes distinguishing between adapted scores (taken from stage productions, for example) and entirely original scores.

This was due to Hollywood’s hot and cold relationship with musicals. Live musicals were more popular in the 1930s and 1940s, and the Academy wanted to award films accordingly. However, as musicals became less popular, certain categories could not be filled, requiring the Academy to pivot by either renaming a category, or simply dropping one altogether.

In 2000, the Academy began a category called Best Original Score, which was supposed to replace the then-retired Best Original Score or Comedy category. Because the Academy’s eligibility requirements for modern musicals are so stringent, no film has been nominated in this category in 25 years.