Oscar Facts of the Day: The Man, the Myth, the Statue

The most popular man at the Oscars this year won't be walking the red carpet or drinking champagne. The most popular man at the Oscars is the actual Oscar himself.

While the official name of the award is Academy Award of Merit, the nickname "Oscar" has been around for decades. The origin of the name is still unclear, but the most common story is that it was Margaret Herrick, a librarian at the Academy, once announced that the statue actually looked like her Uncle Oscar. The Academy officially started calling the statue Oscar in 1939.

The Oscar itself weighs 8.5 pounds and is just 13.5 inches tall. Today, they're made of 24-karat gold; however, during World War II, there was a metal shortage, so the Academy had to make them out of plastic. Following the war, the Academy invited winners to return the plastic figures for gold-plated metal statuettes. To date, 2,809 of these gold statuettes have been handed out.

The phrase "And the Oscar goes to" also came about when the Academy thought "And the winner is" was a bit too harsh. With the 85th ceremony, the Academy is embracing the Oscar name even more, announcing this week that it would refer to this year's awards as just "The Oscars" instead of "The 85th Academy Awards."