by Susan King Feb 27, 2018
Over the decades, special or honorary Oscars have gone to everything from a film series to animated shorts to innovators to a ventriloquist to child performers to foreign films. Tour our photo galleries for a look back featuring every performer honored (above) and every non-performer honored (below).
Two special awards were handed out at the first Academy Awards on May 16, 1929:
Charlie Chaplin, who had originally been nominated for lead actor and for comedy direction for his 1928 masterpiece "The Circus," was withdrawn from those nominations when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences' Board of Governors gave him a special award for his "versatility in writing, acting, directing and producing" the comedy.
Warner Brothers also picked up a special honorary for producing 1927's "The Jazz Singer"-"the pioneer outstanding talking picture, which has revolutionized the industry".
Now called honorary Oscars, Donald Sutherland, cinematographer Owen Roizman ("The French Connection," "The Exorcist"), director Charles Burnett("Killer of Sheep") and pioneering French filmmaker Agnes Varda, who is also nominated this year for her documentary "Faces/Places," were the recipients of the honors at the Governors Awards last November.