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The Oscars stopped giving out a specific kind of award 64 years ago, but the idea behind the Honorary Academy Award could be tweaked to reflect an often overlooked kind of performer. Over the course of 97 years, the Academy Awards have shifted and changed with the times. This meant some categories have been added to the ceremony, while others have been changed. Some potential Oscar categories (like stunts) have been suggested to be included in future Academy Award ceremonies, broadening the chances for a larger variety of films and performances to be celebrated by the Academy in the future.

The history of the Oscars includes unique categories, including informal ones like the Juvenile Academy Awards. An idea that actually predates major categories like Best Supporting Actor and Actress, those Honorary Awards were a chance for the Oscars to celebrate young performers who didn't stand much of a chance to win the major awards.

The 70th Academy Award ceremony on March 23, 1998, is the most-watched Oscar ceremony to date — most likely due to a “Titanic” film nominated for several awards. However, Gil Gates, who produced 14 Oscar ceremonies between 1990 and 2008, also wanted a special segment to recognize Oscar’s platinum anniversary, and arranged for 70 past acting winners to sit together on the stage, with Norman Rose announcing the films for which each performer won. It was a spectacular gathering of actors and actresses from Classic Hollywood, New Hollywood and the contemporary period.

Let’s flashback to the first Oscars family album featured in the ceremony 25 years ago.

SEEOscar flashback 25 years to 1998: Winners are Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, Robin Williams and ‘Titanic’ ratings for ABC

Among those present was the first performer to win back-to-back acting Oscars, Best Actress champ Luise Rainer. At the age of 88, she was the oldest one on the stage; when she...

Jon Whiteley, who received an honorary juvenile Oscar for his performance in the 1953 British drama The Kidnappers, has died. He was 75.

His death was announced by the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, where he served as a teacher and art historian for 38 years.

Whiteley was 8 when he and fellow Scotlander Vincent Winter starred as boys being raised by their grandparents (Duncan Macrae and Jean Anderson) in 1900s Nova Scotia following their father's death. The children then find an abandoned baby and decide to raise her on their own. (The film was known as The Little Kidnappers ...

Jon Whiteley, who received an honorary juvenile Oscar for his performance in the 1953 British drama The Kidnappers, has died. He was 75.

His death was announced by the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, where he served as a teacher and art historian for 38 years.

Whiteley was 8 when he and fellow Scotlander Vincent Winter starred as boys being raised by their grandparents (Duncan Macrae and Jean Anderson) in 1900s Nova Scotia following their father's death. The children then find an abandoned baby and decide to raise her on their own. (The film was known as The Little Kidnappers ...

Over the decades, special or honorary Oscars have gone to everything from a film series to animated shorts to innovators to a ventriloquist to child performers to foreign films. Tour our photo galleries for a look back featuring every performer honored (above) and every non-performer honored (below).

Two special awards were handed out at the first Academy Awards on May 16, 1929:

Charlie Chaplin, who had originally been nominated for lead actor and for comedy direction for his 1928 masterpiece “The Circus,” was withdrawn from those nominations when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences’ Board of Governors gave him a special award for his “versatility in writing, acting, directing and producing” the comedy.

Warner Brothers also picked up a special honorary for producing 1927’s “The Jazz Singer”-“the pioneer outstanding talking picture, which has revolutionized the industry”.

Now called honorary Oscars, Donald Sutherland, cinematographer Owen Roizman (“The French Connection,” “The Exorcist...

I guess there are plenty of adults now too young to remember when Christopher Reeve made his debut as The Man of Steel. It was a massive hit across the full spectrum of moviegoers. Warners is taking good care of everyone’s favorite undocumented visitor from Planet Krypton, and has assembled two separate cuts of his big-screen premiere.

Superman: The Movie

Blu-ray

2-Film Collection

Warner Bros.

1978 / Color / 2:40 widescreen / 188 min. Extended Cut + 151 min. Special Edition orig. 143 min. / Street Date October 10, 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Marlon Brando, Gene Hackman, Christopher Reeve, Ned Beatty, Jackie Cooper, Glenn Ford, Trevor Howard, Margot Kidder, Jack O’Halloran, Valerie Perrine, Maria Schell, Terence Stamp, Phyllis Thaxter, Susannah York, Jeff East, Marc McClure, Sarah Douglas, Harry Andrews, Diane Sherry, Randy Jurgensen, Larry Hagman, John Ratzenberger, Kirk Alyn, Noel Neill.

Cinematography: Geoffrey Unsworth

Film Editors: Stuart Baird, Michael Ellis

Production Design: John Barry

Assistant Director: Vincent Winter...

Seeing as how we may very well be just a few short months away from a new boom in giant monster cinema, it should come as no surprise to see more and more classic kaiju flicks like Gorgo getting the hi-def treatment.

Britain’s answer to Godzilla, Gorgo first stomped her way onto the big screen back in 1971. The final directorial effort from Eugene Lourie (The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, The Colossus of New York, and The Giant Behemoth) starred Bill Travers, William Sylvester, and Vincent Winter and featured top-notch special effects by two-time Oscar winner Tom Howard.

Though the MGM production would prove a one-off, the ear-wiggling reptilian titan managed to spawn a 23-issue comic book by Charleton Comics and remains one of the most respected giant monster movie offerings from the golden age of creature features.

A volcanic eruption in the North Atlantic brings to the surface a 65-foot prehistoric monster.