It’s a Hollywood legend that’s been around for decades. If someone wants to know the future winner of an Academy Award, look to the Golden Globe Awards. If a film wins a Globe, it’s almost certain to the win The Oscar as well.

And the award goes to: believed myth.

The Golden Globe Awards are not promising predictors of Oscar winners. Since its start in 1944, it has picked the same ‘Best Picture’ 40 times as the Academy Awards. It must be said that the Golden Globes have two different categories of ‘Best Picture,’ Musical/Comedy and Drama, which doubles the chances of a matching winner.

‘The Oscars are the mother of all entertainment award shows only because they get the highest ratings and people take (them) most seriously,’ said Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television and a professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. ‘The Golden Globes is a goofy little award.’

Perhaps this is not because Globes have only an adequate winning record when compared to the Oscars, but more to do with its poor choice of winners. For its first show in 1943, the Globe gave its ‘Best Picture’ award to a film called ‘The Song of Bernadette,’ a movie about a girl becoming a nun. That year, the Academy gave its highest honor to ‘Casablanca.’ Other questionable wins throughout history occurred in ’82 when the Globes chose ‘E.T. the Extraterrestrial’ as its best compared to the Academy choice of ‘Ghandi,’ and in ’91 when the Globes decided to give its honor to ‘Bugsy,’ the Academy chose ‘Silence of the Lambs.’

Thompson said the public cares about the Globes for two reasons: it’s a star-studded television event and they believe the hype about its Oscar predictability.

‘Yeah (it’s a good predictor) because it gets people thinking, and it gets the nominees out there and once you are recognized for something it makes people pay attention and take notice,’ said Jaclyn Krivitsky, an undeclared sophomore.

Thompson said there is one thing both award shows agree on: an appreciation for lesser-known art films.

‘It’s one place where box office is not king,’ Thompson said. ‘Both Oscars and the Globes, especially recently, have not been the least bit shy about making nominations, or even wins, to things that are not even close to blockbuster hits.’

This has never been truer than last year’s shows. Both bestowed their award on underground films that were critically acclaimed but publicly ignored. The Globes awarded ‘Brokeback Mountain’ and the Academy did the same with ‘Crash.’ The real shock came from the fact that the Globes hadn’t even nominated ‘Crash.’ After this, many people started to realize that the Globes may not actually provide a guaranteed Oscar win.

While the Golden Globes may not be a crystal ball into the Oscars, they do serve a purpose – a chance for celebrities to come together and look glamorous.

‘I think people who pay attention to this stuff carefully believe that the Golden Globes is a good predictor of the Oscars because they have been told it constantly by feature stories and reporters,’ Thompson said. ‘I think the story of last year (shows that’s not true). Put it this way. I wouldn’t plan your Oscar wagering status accordingly, unless you can afford to lose the money.’

Published on January 17, 2007 at 12:00 pm