(Trivia: who is the screenwriter pictured above?  The first Three Winners get a FREE copy of the book Dr. Format Tells All  by David Trottier. Note leave your answer in the comment's section below! HINT, he is mentioned in the piece below.)

In its infancy the Academy Awards wasn't really sure what it wanted to do with those pesky folks who wrote the stories they filmed. The year was 1929 and the first ever "Oscars" gave out three awards to writers, Best Story, Best Adaptation, and Best Titles (this is the end of the silent era and writing the title cards was an essential part of screenwriting.) The winners were:  Best Story, Ben Hecht for UNDERWORLD, Best Adaptation, SEVENTH HEAVEN by Benjamin Glazer (based on the play Seventh Heaven by Austin Strong), and Best Titles, the first and the only recipient of this award was Joseph Farnham for THE RED MILL.

The award for Best Story was skipped for a year and then in 1931 John Monk Saunders won it for THE DAWN PATROL. The award would stay that way until 1957 when it was ditched for "Best Original Screenplay." The first to receive the award for Best Original Screenplay was Preston Sturges in 1940 for his outstanding script, THE GREAT McGINTY. The following year Herman J. Mankiewicz won for CITIZEN KANE, though so convinced he would not win he didn't bother attending the event.

By 1950 the landscape of storytelling was changing and nothing signified that as much as the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, SUNSET BOULEVARD by Charles Brackett, D.M. Marshman, Jr., and Billy Wilder. Charles Brackett would win again in 1953 for TITANIC along with Richard Breen and Walter Reisch. So to would Billy Wilder  (along with I. A. L. Diamond) in 1960 with THE APARTMENT.

In all so far, 77 screenwriters have received multiple nominations for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

The breakdown for the Top Five for the Best Original Screenplay  is as follows (nominations and wins before tonight):

1) Woody Allen 16/3
2) Billy Wilder 4/2
3) Paddy Chayefsky 3/2
4) Quentin Tarantino 3/2
5) Charles Brackett 2/2

Woody Allen so far is the oldest winner at age 76 for MIDNIGHT IN PARIS in 2011. The most nominations without a win was Federico Fellini who was nominated six times without a win. However, don't feel bad for the Italian director/screenwriter as he did win  five Academy Awards including the most number of Oscars in history for Best Foreign Language Film. Preston Sturges was the first writer to be nominated for two different films in the same year in 1944 for HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO and THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK; Oliver Stone achieved the same distinction for PLATOON and SALVADOR in 1986.

Best Adapted Screenplay has been there since the beginning in 1929. Here's some trivial: The first person to win twice in this category is Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who won the award in two consecutive years, 1950 and 1951. Women writers dominated early Hollywood with the likes of Anita Loose and others, no one as famous and important as Frances Marion who was the first woman to win in Best Adapted Screenplay in 1930. Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh are the only married couple to win in this category, for THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING.

Francis Ford Coppola and William Goldman are the only ones to have won Oscars for both Original and Adapted Screenplays.

(Souce, Source)