Inaugural Emmy awards ceremony
Hollywoods first television academy had been founded three years earlier by Sid Cassyd a former film editor for Frank Capra who later worked as a grip at Paramount Studios and an entertainment journalist.At a time when only about 50000 American households had TV sets Cassyd saw the need for an organization that would foster productive discussion of the fledgling entertainment medium.The academys membership grew quickly despite the lack of support from the Hollywood motion-picture establishment which perhaps understandably felt threatened by TV and its potential to keep audiences entertained at home (and away from the theaters).In 1947 the well-known radio personality Edgar Bergen (father of Candice Bergen who would become a noted actress) agreed to become the first president of Cassyds organization.
Though Cassyd had originally objected to the idea of awards arguing that the groups primary goals should be cultural and educational he eventually succumbed to the need for a highly visible event to raise the academys profile.After rejecting 47 designs Cassyd and his colleagues selected the now-famous statuette depicting a winged woman holding an atom in her extended arms.Created by the TV engineer Louis McManus who used his wife as a model the figure represented the collaborative relationship between art (the muse) and science (the atom).
The name Emmy was a feminized version of immy the shorthand term for the image orthicon tube that was used in TV cameras until the 1960s.Shirley Dinsdale a 20-year-old ventriloquist who starred in the childrens show Judy Splinters
