He presided over a significant expansion of the Academy’s staff and was an early proponent for an Academy museum, an effort that came to fruition when the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opened on Wilshire Boulevard in 2021.
“I don’t think I’ve been bored for a minute in 30 years here,” Davis told The Associated Press upon his retirement in 2011. “I feel like such a rube sometimes. To this day, when I get out of the car on Oscar night and step up there onto that carpet, you get that rush of energy. The lights are popping – – not that anybody’s aiming at me — but still I think it’s one of the great rushes, emotionally speaking, that a person can have. I have never gotten tired of that.”