The movies are filled with scrying glasses and crystal balls and Magic 8 balls and glowing tunnel thingies that help people peer into the future, maybe by an hour, maybe by a day or even a century.
Which leads a movie lover to ponder this: If the people sitting inside the Blossom Ballroom at The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in 1929 had enjoyed access to such a magical device — now we're picturing it as The Wicked Witch of the West's crystal ball, from "The Wizard of Oz" — would they have seen that the very awards show they were attending would unfurl across the street nearly nine decades later?
For The Academy Awards, the world's best-known entertainment-based honor, first were handed out at the historic hotel, which now sits about two minutes southwest of The Dolby Theatre, on Hollywood Boulevard, where the modern-day ceremony takes place.
No crystal ball is required, though, to see that a fancy party will take place, in the Blossom Ballroom, on the evening of Sunday, March 4, just as the red-carpet hubbub is happening on the street outside.
The price to join said fancy party?
It's $175, and that includes a split of bubbly as well as a dinner buffet that's inspired by the original menu of the first Academy Awards ceremony. Cornish game hen will be served, and heirloom tomato salad, and fluke crudo, too.
And, yes, a live broadcast will show all of the I'd-like-to-thank-the-Academy action just across the road.
The Scene
Want to find new things to do in Los Angeles? The Scene's lifestyle stories have you covered. Here's your go-to source on where the fun is across SoCal and for the weekend.
Best email Eyim@thehollywoodroosevelt.com, lickety-split, for more information on reserving a spot.
As for the Blossom Ballroom, which still exists, grandly, as some sort of portal back to the 1920s?
It will always stand as the fresh soil where the Academy Awards ceremony first sprouted. The Pantages came later as a ceremony location, and The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and several other local landmarks, but The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel will forever top lists, in the number one spot, as "places where the Academy Awards have taken place."
Finally? We know "The Wizard of Oz" arrived a decade after the first Academy Awards, and we suggested that attendees at the 1929 ceremony would have access to The Wicked Witch's crystal ball, which hadn't technically been seen on screen at that time.
But that's the thing about magic, Hollywood, the past and the future: It all blends together, rather enchantingly, and especially when Oscar Night rolls back around.
