16 Surprising Emmy Award Facts You’ve Never Heard Before

Six awards were given out at the first ceremony

The very first Emmy Awards, held on Jan. 25, 1949, at the Hollywood Athletic Club, was a low-key affair compared with today’s spectacle. Tickets to attend cost just $5, and only six awards were handed out that night. Original award categories included Most Popular Television Program, Best Film Made for Television and Most Outstanding Television Personality.

Winners must pay $400 for their own statuette

Some Emmy Award winners must fork over a pretty penny if they want to take home a statuette. Because each trophy costs an estimated $400 to make, the Television Academy often charges extra fees if certain winners (such as large writing teams) want to receive multiple statuettes.

The shortest Emmy acceptance speech was 11 words long

Actress Merritt Wever pulled off a major win in 2013 for her supporting role in the TV show Nurse Jackie. But when she took the stage to accept the award, Wever kept her remarks short and sweet. Her acceptance speech totaled just 11 words: “Thanks so much. Thank you so much. I gotta go. Bye.”

The Emmy statuette is modeled after a TV engineer’s wife

Emmy Award founder Syd Cassyd rejected 47 design proposals for the Emmy’s famous statuette before he finally settled on the one we all know and love today. The design featured a woman with wings to represent the arts, holding an atom to symbolize the sciences. Louis McManus, a television engineer and the design’s creator, had modeled the figure after his wife.

A ventriloquist won the very first Emmy

In 1949, at the first Emmy Awards ceremony, 20-year-old Shirley Dinsdale became the first person to receive an Emmy (along with her puppet, named Judy Splinters) for her role as a ventriloquist in a popular variety show. The two leading ladies later starred in a children’s show named after the puppet.

Networks pay up to $500,000 just to get nominated

Racking up Emmy Awards isn’t all fun and games. Television networks actually shell out big bucks just to get their series nominated for a prize. Here’s a wild Emmy Award fact for you: It is estimated that each network pays between $150,000 and $500,000 before they even arrive at the ceremony, covering the Television Academy’s fees and costs of producing and distributing DVDs (among other things).

The yellow first-down line seen on NFL broadcasts won an Emmy

Actors and television shows are not the only winners on Emmy night; televised football’s yellow first-down line, also called 1st & Ten, was once honored too. Developed by technology company Sportvision and ESPN, the graphic debuted in 1998 during a game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Cincinnati Bengals. It won two Emmys for technical achievement that year.

Saturday Night Live is the most decorated show in Emmy history

Saturday Night Live boasts the most Emmy victories ever, beating out favorites like the Academy Awards itself and the Olympics broadcast. Since its first telecast in 1976, the sketch comedy show has received more than 70 wins and 270 nominations, in categories ranging from directing to writing.

It takes over five hours to make one Emmy statuette

Employees at R.S. Owens, a Chicago-based manufacturing shop, spend five and a half hours molding and coating every statuette in copper, nickel, silver and gold. At the end of the day, the statuettes weigh in at nearly 7 pounds each.

Jackie Kennedy was the first (and only!) first lady to receive an Emmy Award

Jackie Kennedy’s famous televised tour of the White House in 1962 earned her an Emmy nod, making her the first and only first lady of the United States to ever win the award. Lady Bird Johnson, the wife of then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson, was in attendance and accepted the award on Kennedy’s behalf. The statuette is now displayed at the JFK Presidential Library in Boston.

There were once some very unusual award categories

Categories like Outstanding Lead Actor and Outstanding Drama Series might sound straightforward, but they have not always been that way. Back in the day, the Emmys tested an award for “Best Continuing Performance in a Series by a Comedienne, Singer, Hostess, Dancer, MC, Announcer, Narrator, Panelist or Any Person Who Essentially Plays Herself,” along with a similar category for males. Unsurprisingly, the two award categories were nixed the following year.

Someone nearly stole an Emmy onstage

In 1985, actress Betty Thomas won Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for the TV show Hill Street Blues—but a mysterious man appeared onstage and accepted the Emmy before she could. The prankster was Barry Bremen, nicknamed “The Great Imposter,” who had pulled similar pranks at other large events like the Super Bowl. He ended up with a $175 fine and six months’ probation for the stunt.

Two video game controllers have won Emmy awards

Believe it or not, even video game controllers can walk away with Emmys. Sony’s original DualShock Analog controller and Nintendo’s NES/Famicom controller received awards in 2007 at the 58th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards, which recognizes achievements in science, engineering and technology for broadcast and personal television.

The Emmy was named after a video camera tube

Talk about an obscure piece of Emmy trivia: Back in the 1940s, the Television Academy needed a title for its new awards ceremony. One member suggested “Immy,” the name of a tube inside video cameras that captures moving images. But the team wanted the title to sound more feminine, to match the female statuette, so they tweaked it to “Emmy.”

A Supreme Court justice once hosted the ceremony

The Third Annual Primetime Emmy Awards in 1951 had a special (and unusual!) host: Earl Warren, the governor of California at the time. Warren went on to become a chief justice in the United States Supreme Court, leading some people to wonder if he would have been a better Emmy judge instead.

Betty White received an Emmy nomination in six different decades—and won in four

Over her nearly 80-year career, actress Betty White racked up over 20 Emmy nominations and took home eight trophies. One of White’s Emmy wins honored her appearance as a host on Saturday Night Live in 2010. This made her the oldest Emmy winner ever at 88 years old. In September 2019, she lost that title to Norman Lear, 97, who won for his TV special, Live in Front of a Studio Audience: Norman Lear’s All in the Family and the Jeffersons. White’s last Emmy win was in 2015, when she received the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Why trust us

At Reader’s Digest, we’re committed to producing high-quality content by writers with expertise and experience in their field in consultation with relevant, qualified experts. We rely on reputable primary sources, including government and professional organizations and academic institutions as well as our writers’ personal experiences where appropriate. For this piece on Emmy Award facts and trivia, we verified all facts and data, backed them with credible sourcing and will revisit them over time to ensure they remain accurate and up to date. Read more about our team, our contributors and our editorial policies.

Sources:

• GoldDerby: “Emmys flashback to the first ceremony: Six awards, $5 tickets, and the big winner was a ventriloquist”
• Variety: “Betty White to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award at Daytime Emmys”
• Television Academy: “Jackie Kennedy was the first (and only!) First Lady to receive an Emmy award”
• Television Academy: “History of the Emmy Statuette”