On March 19, 1953, the 25th Academy Awards became the first Oscars ceremony shown on television, carried live by NBC. The show was produced on two coasts: Bob Hope hosted the main ceremony at the RKO Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, while Conrad Nagel hosted a companion ceremony at the NBC International Theatre in New York, and the cameras switched between the two cities depending on where a presenter or winner was. Radio had covered the ceremony since its second year; the first ceremony in 1929 had no broadcast at all.

Cecil B. DeMille's circus drama The Greatest Show on Earth won Best Picture over the heavily favored High Noon, and DeMille also received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. John Ford won Best Director for The Quiet Man. Gary Cooper won Best Actor, his second, for playing Marshal Will Kane in High Noon, which won four Oscars in all, including film editing and both music awards; it was only…