The Golden Globes have the distinguished honor of being one of the only awards where celebrities, journalists and guests gather together at a function without stepping on each other’s toes. The very elegant awards show also features alcohol and dinner on the menu making sure the ceremony is informal and everyone is in good spirits. The show is also known to be one in which the stars bring out their real-life eccentricity. The organization that introduced the film industry and the world to the Golden Globes is the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA). The HFPA originally consisted of eight Los Angeles based foreign journalists.
The first awards ceremony was held at 20th Century Fox Studios and winners in the five categories were presented with scrolls. The idea for the award Golden Globe statuette came from the 1946 Association President Marina Cisternas.
- The Golden Globes were broadcast only locally in L.A. from 1953-1963. The first national telecasts of the Globes were on a special segment on The Andy Williams Show in 1964 and 1965.
- The Golden Globes were given out by journalists who were members of the association until 1958, when the stars Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. walked up on stage with their whisky glasses and cigarettes and took over the stage and the responsibility of hosting the show. They were called on by the HFPA for a repeat performance the very next year.
- Clean sweep: Doctor Zhivago(1966), One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”(1976), and A star is Born(1977) won all five Golden Globe Awards they were nominated for.
- Most Globes won by a film: five, shared by five winners: Doctor Zhivago(1966), Love Story (1971), The Godfather (1973), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1976), and A Star is Born (1977).
- The film with the most nominations: nine for Nashville(1976) won just a single Golden Globe for the Best Song I'm Easy by Keith Carradine.
- Only one film has won all five globes in the major categories (Best Motion Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, and Screenplay): One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1976.
- Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1967) and The Godfather, Part III (1991) received 7 nominations each but never won a single Globe.
- The youngest winner at the Globes: Ricky Schroeder was nine years old when he was awarded the Globe for Best New Star of the Year in 1980 for The Champ.
- Actress and actor with highest individual nomination: Meryl Streep with 25 nominations and Jack Lemmon with 22 nominations.
- The only three way tie in the history of the Golden Globes was in 1989 when Jodie Foster (The Accused), Shirley MacLaine (Madame Sousatzka), and Sigourney Weaver (Gorillas in the Mist) all won the award for Best Actress in 1989.
- Rosalind Russel was nominated five times and won every one of the globes, but she never went on to win an Oscar.
- Most individual Globes: Meryl Streep has a collection of seven, Jack Nicholson with six, Francis Ford Coppola, Shirley MacLaine, Rosalind Russell, and Oliver Stone have five each.Most nominations in one year: Jamie Foxx, 2005.
- Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, "Ray"; Best Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture – Drama, "Collateral"; Best Actor in a Mini-Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television, "Redemption".
- Only two Golden Globes have been refused in the history of the awards: The producers of “Z” refused the Globe for Best Foreign Language Film in 1970 because they wanted the film included in the main Best Motion Picture category. In 1973 Marlon Brando refused his award to protest U.S. "imperialism and racism". He refused to accept his Oscar and sent a representative instead to give a political speech.
