Hollywood's award season kicks off Sunday with the Golden Globes ceremony, airing at 5 p.m. on NBC.
Get ready to watch what is generally considered the liveliest, least choreographed and most fun major Hollywood award ceremony on Sunday.
The Golden Globes, which was initially called the Hollywood Foreign Correspondents Association  was started in 1943 by 21 foreign journalists and first held during a luncheon at 20th Century Fox where the winners in five categories, Best Motion Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best supporting Actor and Actress—received scrolls.
The use of globes as symbols of victory was introduced three years later when the association’s president came up with the idea of presenting a golden globe on a pedestal.
The informal set up, which features celebs, journalists and guests mingling freely lends informality and a few surprises. In 1999, actor Jack Nicholson won the Cecile B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award and gave thanks by nearly mooning the audience; in 2009, actor Colin Farrell hinted at a former cocaine problem after sniffling while announcing that “Waltz with Bashir” won the foreign film award.
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About 250 million viewers are expected to tune in to watch the awards which air Sunday on NBC at 5 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.
The Globes is in love with actor Meryl Streep, who has been nominated 30 times in 38 years since her first in 1979 for “The Deer Hunter.” That’s far more than any other living actor, including the Jack Lemmon who comes in second with 22 nominations, and Shirley MacLaine with 19.
The awards were dispersed by journalists until 1958 when Rat Packers Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr. stormed the stage, with whiskeys and cigarettes in hand, and took over the show, to the delight of the audience. They repeated their performance the next year (at the request of the foreign press) and since then, all the presenters have been stars.