LOS ANGELES (CNS) \u2014 Bruce Davis, who served as chief executive of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for 22 years, has died at the age of 83, it was reported today.<\/p>\n
Davis, who lived in Hollywood, died Saturday evening after a battle with leukemia, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which cited his wife.<\/p>\n
Davis attended college in Pennsylvania and Maryland, then moved to Los Angeles in 1980 to pursue a career as a screenwriter. He joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1981 and rose through the ranks, earning a promotion to executive director in 1989.<\/p>\n
He presided over a significant expansion of the Academy\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve been bored for a minute in 30 years here,\u2019\u2019 Davis told The Associated Press upon his retirement in 2011. \u201cI 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 \u2014 not that anybody\u2019s aiming at me \u2014 but still I think it\u2019s one of the great rushes, emotionally speaking, that a person can have. I have never gotten tired of that.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
In 2022, Davis published \u201cThe Academy and the Award,\u2019\u2019 billed as \u201cthe first behind-the-scenes history of the organization behind the Academy Awards.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Among other tidbits, Davis set about solving the mystery of who coined the name Oscar for the Academy Awards statue. He settled on Eleanore Lilleberg, a little-known assistant in the Academy\u2019s early days who was said to have taken the name from a Norwegian army veteran in her old Chicago neighborhood who was known for standing ramrod straight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES (CNS) \u2014 Bruce Davis, who served as chief executive of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[21469,11496,109299,180407,180412,2029,7,180408,180406,180409,180405,180411,48,52,51,47,50,49,180410],"class_list":["post-457153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-academy-awards","tag-academy-museum-of-motion-pictures","tag-academy-of-motion-picture-arts-and-sciences","tag-american-film-awards","tag-arts-organizations","tag-beverly-hills","tag-california","tag-cinema-of-southern-california","tag-culture-of-los-angeles-county","tag-entertainment-industry-societies","tag-film-organizations","tag-film-related-professional-associations","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-north-american-film-awards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}