(NEXSTAR) – The 25th Academy Awards marked a number of “firsts” for the ceremony: It was the first to be broadcast on television; the first to be held at two venues simultaneously (one in Hollywood, the other in New York City); and it was the first time that the winners of Best Picture, Best Director, and all of the acting categories had each been honored for their work in entirely different films.
It was also the first Oscars ceremony to be announced by a future U.S. president (at least so far).
The producers of the 25th Academy Awards turned to Ronald Reagan — then 42 years old — to take on the duties of “special television commentator,” a role that later evolved into the ceremony’s announcer.
To the Academy, Reagan may have seemed like the perfect person for the job. A veteran actor who started his entertainment career as a radio broadcaster and play-by-play announcer, Reagan seemed perfectly at ease narrating the scene outside the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood in real-time, as heard in a clip shared to YouTube by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Reagan had also done this before, reportedly contributing to the radio broadcast of the 22nd Academy Awards alongside sports announcer Ken Carpenter and actress Eve Arden, according to The Old Radio Times. And it didn’t hurt that he was well educated on the inner workings of Hollywood, having just ended his tenure as the seventh president of the Screen Actors Guild.
“Now, ladies and gentlemen, you are looking west on Hollywood Boulevard,” Reagan can be heard telling TV viewers at the opening of the 1953 broadcast. “Perhaps population changes have swung the motion picture industry away from this historic street somewhat, but it will always remain a little bit nostalgia in memory, something like 42nd St. and Broadway.”
He soon started pointing out movie stars like Tony Curtis, Leslie Caron and Marge Champion as they entered the theater.
Reagan, over the next decade, continued to appear in major films and television productions (and briefly returned to his role at SAG president), but eventually retired from his acting career in the mid-1960s as his political aspirations grew.
In the meantime, the Academy continued its tradition of enlisting Hollywood actors as their special TV correspondents, utilizing the talents of Raymond Burr and Robert Cummings for a few years after the 25th Oscars.
But starting in the ‘60s, the ceremony’s producers largely switched over to dedicated announcers and voiceover actors — a trend that continued through the early 2020s. That’s changed a bit in recent years, when the producers of the 2024 Oscars recruited David Alan Grier (“In Living Color,” “St. Denis Medical”) for the gig. The Academy also revealed this week that Nick Offerman (“Parks and Recreation,” “Civil War”) is scheduled to announce the upcoming ceremony on March 2.
The Gipper, however, was the first to announce the Oscars on live TV. It’s likely he’ll also be the only president to have a major role in an Academy production — especially now that Donald has finally dropped his aspirations to emcee the ceremony on Hollywood’s biggest night. (For real.)