The Golden Globes used to be a joke – now it is one of the most prestigious awards shows on the planet

How has an event organised by an obscure club of expat journalists, where tipsy A-listers briefly set down their vodka to accept their awards, come to be one of Hollywood’s most important bellwethers, asks Ed Power

Emma Thompson speaks during the 71st edition at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in California (Photography by Getty)

A giggling Bette Midler tells a dirty joke and simulates performing a lewd act upon the gold-lacquered gong she has just accepted. Oliver Stone, his hair spooling madly down towards his shoulders, rants about America’s war on drugs as boos ring out and host Chevy Chase tells him to “just say ‘thank you’ and leave the stage”.

And let’s not forget Emma Thompson flinging her shoes over her shoulder and handing her martini to an assistant, or noted chuckle champion Cate Blanchett joking about that time Judy Garland was force-fed barbiturates. Renee Zellweger almost misses her big moment entirely because she has gone to the loo. Hugh Grant is up at the podium accepting a gleaming accolade on her behalf when she bursts back into the room, pegging it through the crowd in her couture gown.

We could be talking about the Oscars, but obviously we aren’t. All the above incidents occurred at the Golden Globes, the awards show where Hollywood allows its crazy side off the leash, which returns on Sunday night with impish Ricky Gervais as host. And though this junior sibling of the Academy Awards has calmed down significantly in the past several years, the annual Hollywood Foreign Press Association gong-giving ceremony is still far more riotous than the Oscars, or most other awards, would dare to be.

The zaniness isn’t just confined to tipsy A-listers briefly setting down their vodkas (which is what Blanchett says she’d been drinking when she dropped her Garland wisecrack in 2014) in order to lurch to the podium to receive their gleaming mementoes. In its 77 years, the Globes has defied received wisdom and industry convention with gusto. And yet, here it is in 2020, the second most prestigious awards show on the planet after the Oscars.

The Globes’ litany of head-scratching gestures includes giving the Best New Star award in 1982 to the unknown lead in a bizarre incest movie (more on which later), honouring Ridley Scott sci-fi drama The Martian as Best Musical or Comedy in 2016, and applauding Lady Gaga for her stilted turn in American Horror Story. This year, meanwhile, there is every possibility the Globes will name opinion-splitting Joker as Best Drama, and hand the Best Musical or Comedy prize to Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino’s often brutal deconstruction of the Manson murders. At the Globes, anything goes.

The real question, of course, is how an event organised by an obscure club of expat journalists (which today has a membership of around 90) has come to be one of Hollywood’s most important bellwethers. Success at the Globes can bring real momentum, transforming a dark horse into a genuine contender.

That was certainly the case last year when the journey of Bohemian Rhapsody from troubled production (director Bryan Singer was fired halfway through the shoot) to awards season challenger began in earnest with Rami Malek’s Best Actor win at the Globes. When he went on to repeat that feat at the Oscars, it was understood that the HFPA’s endorsement had boosted his chances enormously. It helps that the deadline for Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences members to submit their Oscar nominations is early January, when the Golden Globes are still fresh in the memory.

The Globes aren’t necessarily taken seriously in Hollywood. Coverage tends to focus on the riotous atmosphere as stars let down their hair to an extent unimaginable at the Oscars. But they are taken seriously enough that all the nominees turn up. And success at the Golden Globes carries far more clout than winning at the SAGs or Baftas. Against all logic, the Globes have become hugely important.

Brian May, Rami Malek and Roger Taylor during the 76th Golden Globes (Getty) ((Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images))

“The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has made some head-scratching decisions with their nominees in recent years,” says Rebecca Daniel, who writes about cinema and award ceremonies at the website Show Me The Movies. “Take, for instance, Vice or Get Out nominated in Best Picture Musical or Comedy. Both films tackled pretty serious issues without being particularly comedic or musically inclined.”

Just six awards were handed out at the first Golden Globes, held at the 20th Century Fox studio in West LA in January 1944 (Best Picture went to The Song of Bernadette​). And the winners didn’t even receive one of the iconic Globes: instead, they were awarded certificates, which were sent to their homes the following day. The Globes, depicting the world wreathed in a dramatic swirl of celluloid and plated in 24-carat gold, would not make an appearance until the following year.

But not even the arrival of the titular gongs could do much to raise the Globes’ credibility in those early years. They did distinguish themselves from the Oscars in 1957, though, when award categories for television were announced. To this day, it is in TV where the Globes’ reputation is arguably strongest. The Golden Globes were, for instance, the first awards ceremony to take streaming seriously by naming Amazon’s Mozart in the Jungle Best Comedy Television Series in 2016. At the time, the Emmys still looked on Netflix and its rivals as though they were a novelty that might sink back to irrelevance.

The Globes had, by then, travelled a long way from what was perceived as their lowest moment: the awarding in 1982 of Best New Star to the unheard-of Pia Zadora, over Kathleen Turner and Elizabeth McGovern. The New York Times had likened her to “Brigitte Bardot recycled through a kitchen compactor” after her screen debut in incest drama Butterfly, an independent movie bankrolled by her billionaire husband, 30 years her senior.

An air of “quiet shock” fell upon the room when her name was read aloud by Timothy Hutton, Zadora herself would later recall. All sides denied it, but the suspicion was that her award had been paid for. Her husband, Meshulam Riklis, a self-proclaimed “bad boy” of Wall Street, flew HFPA members to Las Vegas for a screening of Butterfly, which also starred Orson Welles and Ed McMahon (it would not be released until a month after the Globes and died a quick and painful death).

“The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has mostly cleaned up its reputation for being bought off over the years,” says Susan Wloszczyna, a senior editor at awards prediction website Gold Derby, “ever since the great Pia Zadora controversy. And, yes, they still play with the category designations, allowing Bohemian Rhapsody and A Star Is Born to vie as dramas and not as a musical or comedy. They do like to ensure that the most popular and glamorous stars are in attendance and get plenty of camera time on TV.”

Which brings us back to that original question: why does Hollywood give so much credence to the Golden Globes? The stars may drink their way through the night in a way they wouldn’t dare at the Oscars, but they’ll still all be at the Beverly Hilton at 5pm local time, as Ricky Gervais steps up to the mic and proceeds to spray the room with insults.

Ricky Gervais hosts the 73rd Golden Globes (Getty) (Paul Drinkwater/NBCUniversal via Getty Images)

“The biggest shift I’ve noticed is that all movie stars attend the Golden Globes,” says Sasha Stone, the founder of Awards Daily. “I’ve been covering the awards race for 20 years and when I started it wasn’t something all of the stars did, certainly not those who wanted to be taken seriously.”

The attraction of the Golden Globes, she explains, is that they are an opportunity for actors to burnish their A-lister status. They get to be seen as movie stars, moving among other movie stars. In an industry where perception counts for so much, the Globes are an invaluable shop window. This is distinct from, and perhaps even more important than, whatever role they play in anointing Oscar winners. In an era where franchises such as Marvel and Star Wars count for more than individual star power, an event with the prominence of the Globes is not to be sniffed at.

“The pendulum began to shift at the same time that movie stars began to lose power. Now there is a sense that every career, every movie, requires going to battle because nominations can mean higher box office, better jobs, more name recognition,” says Stone.

“I’ve still never gotten used to not only every star showing up at the Globes, but now all of them showing up even at the Critics’ Choice awards, never mind the SAG and the Bafta awards. They turn up to be seen, to be known, to hold onto power that they need to survive in a fast-shifting climate. It isn’t even so much that it’s all done to get to the Oscars, although certainly, that’s part of it: the Oscars are still the top of the heap. But the Globes are in themselves a great career boost, publicity-wise. While they aren’t quite at the level of the number one thing people mention when you die, they are certainly more respectable today than they’ve ever been.”

She concludes: “Think of them like the Kardashians, I suppose, or, God help us, Donald Trump. Their empires were mostly built on hate but in the end it hardly matters. Power is power, no matter how it has been attained … Fame is fame. Awards are awards.”