In the beginning it was called the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and/or Sciences. While its ostensible purpose was management-approved mediation, its implicit goal was to pre-empt actors, writers and directors from organizing, as carpenters, musicians and electricians had done in 1926. Statuettes were an afterthought.
In a deal two decades in the making, China is opening its doors to the Walt Disney Co., having finally given the quintessentially Western enterprise the go-ahead to bring Mickey Mouse and his fellow characters to Shanghai with a new Disney theme park tailored to the Chinese megalopolis.