The Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award is voted by the Academy’s Board of Governors and is presented to “creative producers whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production.”

The award is a solid bronze head of Irving Thalberg, resting on a black marble base. It weighs 10 and 3/4 pounds and is nine inches tall. The Thalberg bust in use today (there were two earlier versions) was sculpted by Gualberto Rocchi in 1957 and was first used in 1966 when William Wyler received the award at the 38th Academy Awards.

It was named in honor of the man who became head of production at the Universal Film Manufacturing Co. at the age of 20 and three years later was vice president and head of production for Louis B. Mayer. A year later, Mayer's studio became part of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) with Thalberg assuming the position of vice president and supervisor of production. Over the next eight years MGM became Hollywood's most prestigious film studio, with Thalberg personally supervising the studio's top productions. Thalberg died of pneumonia in 1936 at the age of 37. The following year, the Academy instituted the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.

The Thalberg Award is not given each year. In earlier years, some individuals were honored more than once; but for the 1962 (35th) Awards (and continuing to present day), the Board voted that “no individual shall be eligible to receive the Thalberg Award more than once.”

As with other awards presented at the Academy Awards ceremony, the year listed here is the awards year. The Thalberg Award to Dino De Laurentiis, for example, was presented at the 2000 Academy Awards ceremony, held on March 25, 2001.

THE THREE FACES OF THALBERG

THE ACADEMY'S "OTHER" STATUETTE HAS A QUIRKY HISTORY

The Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, presented periodically to creative producers whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production, was named for the “boy wonder” vice president and supervisor of production at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the 1920s and ’30s. He personally supervised the studio’s top productions until his death from pneumonia in 1936 at the age of 37.

Shortly after Thalberg died, the Academy established its first named testimonial award in his honor. The first recipient was Darryl F. Zanuck at the 1937 Academy Awards ceremony (held in 1938). The award featured a small and somewhat delicate Thalberg “head,” designed by sculptor Bernard Sopher, resting on an attractive column of green marble. Three other honorees subsequently received that design between 1939 and 1942: Hal B. Wallis, David O. Selznick and Walt Disney.

But Thalberg’s widow, the actress Norma Shearer, evidently had objections to this rendering of her husband’s head, so she commissioned a new sculpture at her own expense. She went so far as to send the new version to all the previous winners – which explains why, in 1995, the Academy received three Thalberg Awards from the Hal Wallis estate, though he had been voted the award only twice. Wallis had two different versions of the 1939 trophy. His third trophy was the one he had received in 1944, when he became the second “official” Academy recipient of “Norma’s design.” (Rules have since changed so that an individual can receive the Thalberg Award only once.)