Bruce Davis, who served as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ chief executive for 22 of the 30 years that he spent with the organization, during which he made a profound impact on Hollywood and global cinema, has died. He was 83.
Davis died Saturday evening following a battle with leukemia, his wife, Joann, told The Hollywood Reporter.
Davis, born in Washington, D.C., on March 10, 1943, received an undergraduate degree in English from Juniata College in Pennsylvania and a masters degree in Medieval Literature from the University of Maryland. He initially entered academia and rose to become chair of the theater department at Juniata. But a longstanding desire to write screenplays motivated him to relocate to Los Angeles in 1980, where, shortly after his arrival, he attended a party where he met someone whose wife worked at the Academy. That encounter led to Davis being hired, just weeks later, to arrange seminars and lectures for the organization.
In 1983, Davis was elevated to executive administrator and tasked with overseeing the Academy’s library, archives and public programming. Then, in 1989, he was promoted to executive director of the entire organization, succeeding Jim Roberts, who had held the role since 1971.
Over the ensuing decades, spanning the terms of six Academy presidents, Davis presided over the day-to-day operations of the organization, staffing for which grew from 75 to 200. And he also oversaw large-scale undertakings like the relocation of the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library to the Beverly Hills Waterworks building in 1991 and the establishment of its film archive at the Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study, which opened in 2002. His long-running efforts to rally financial support for an Academy museum were derailed by the Great Recession.
In 2010, Davis informed the board of governors of his intent to retire at the end of the 2010-11 fiscal year and sent a memo to Academy staff sharing his plans: “When I leave, I will have spent 30 years at the Academy and more than 20 as its executive director. That seems like enough. Organizations and individuals both benefit from periodic shifts in perspective.” He was succeeded by Dawn Hudson, who remained in the job until 2022 when Bill Kramer, the current CEO, was hired.
Davis, in the years after his retirement, maintained an office at the Pickford Center and was frequently at the Herrick Library, conducting research for a history of the organization that would be published by Brandeis University Press in 2022 as The Academy and the Award: The Coming of Age of Oscar and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Among other things, it got further than any other effort in determining the origin of the nickname for the Academy Award, “Oscar.”
Ric Robertson, who succeeded Davis as the Academy’s executive administrator in 1989 and served as his top deputy from then through Davis’ retirement, tells THR, “Bruce was a remarkable man — a great leader, a great mentor and a great friend.”
Bill Kramer and Lynette Howell Taylor, the Academy’s current president, said in a statement: “We are deeply saddened by the passing of Bruce Davis. For 22 years, Bruce served as the executive director of the Academy, leading the organization with devotion. He was deeply committed to preserving the Academy’s history, establishing dedicated homes for our library and film archive, and relaunching the concept of creating a museum. He had a profound love for the Academy. Our thoughts are with his family during this difficult time.”
In 2011, the day before he retired, Davis told the Associated Press, “I don’t think I’ve been bored for a minute in 30 years here. I feel like such a rube sometimes. To this day, when I get out of the car on Oscar night and step up there onto that carpet, you get that rush of energy. The lights are popping — not that anybody’s aiming at me — but still I think it’s one of the great rushes, emotionally speaking, that a person can have. I have never gotten tired of that.”
In addition to his wife, survivors include their daughters, Brangien, Alexandra, Archer and Roxanne, all of whom were with him at the end.
