Academy Founders 15

N.B. The member numbers follow The Internet Movie Database's list order announcing the Academy in January 1927. 

15. Sid Grauman (1879-1950) of the Producers Branch, at a typical ceremony at his Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Here, (Richard) Red Skelton (1913-1997) signs the pavement with his wife Edna in 1942.

In his day, Sid Grauman was as famous as any of the stars whose films showed in his Los Angeles theaters: the Chinese, the Egyptian, the Million Dollar, and the Metropolitan.

Grauman's Chinese Theatre particularly captured people's imaginations: built on land that had once belonged to Francis X. Bushman, it opened in May 1927 with Cecil B. DeMille's THE KING OF KINGS. (Jeanie MacPherson, #29, was the film’s screenwriter; the cast was a Who's Who of 1920s' Hollywood,)

In 1949, the Academy awarded Grauman an honorary Oscar as a "Master showman, [one] who raised the standard of exhibition of motion pictures."