LOS ANGELES, CA — Bruce Davis, who served as chief executive of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for 22 years, has died at the age of 83, it was reported Monday.
Davis, who lived in Hollywood, died Saturday evening after a battle with leukemia, according to The Hollywood Reporter, which cited his wife.
Davis attended college in Pennsylvania and Maryland, then moved to Los Angeles in 1980 to pursue a career as a screenwriter. He joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1981 and rose through the ranks, earning a promotion to executive director in 1989.
He presided over a significant expansion of the Academy's staff and was an early proponent for an Academy museum, an effort that came to fruition when the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opened on Wilshire Boulevard in 2021.
"I don't think I've been bored for a minute in 30 years here," Davis told The Associated Press upon his retirement in 2011. "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 2022, Davis published "The Academy and the Award," billed as "the first behind-the-scenes history of the organization behind the Academy Awards."
Among other tidbits, Davis set about solving the mystery of who coined the name Oscar for the Academy Awards statue. He settled on Eleanore Lilleberg, a little-known assistant in the Academy's early days who was said to have taken the name from a Norwegian army veteran in her old Chicago neighborhood who was known for standing ramrod straight.
Copyright 2026, City News Service, Inc.
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