Oscar telecast will jettison Thalberg, Hersholt and Honorary Oscar awards

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If you are going to expand the best picture category from five to ten movies, you’ve got to cut somewhere or the show will literally go on forever. Say goodbye to the Thalberg, the Hersholt and the Honorary Oscar. The awards will instead be given in a separate black tie ceremony in November, likely at the Kodak Theatre.

Those three awards are the first cuts the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences will make to shorten ABC’s broadcast of the show. The Irvin G. Thalberg Memorial Award, which the Academy said is given to ‘“creative producers whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production’ while the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award is given to an “individual in the motion picture industry whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry.” The Honorary Oscar is given, well, as an honorary Oscar.

None of the awards are given out on annual basis. The Thalberg, for example, was last given during the 2001 telecast to Dino de Laurentiis.

Other trims in the telecast are likely in the coming months.

-- Claudia Eller and Joe Flint