Seth MacFarlane gets what Hugh Jackman, Steve Martin, Jon Stewart and even Billy Crystal never got: top billing on his Oscar poster. (But this isn't the official 85th anniversary Oscar poster -- that one will be released in February.)
Back in 1941, the Oscars were aimed at such a small audience that the poster could remind voters of when polls closed and suggest they "plan your party early!"
ABC took over for the first time to broadcast "the most glittering entertainment of 1961," which crowned Billy Wilder's "The Apartment" best picture.
Important enough that it was worth nothing on the poster in 1967: The Oscars were broadcast "in Color."
The 1973 poster had some flash and day-glo colors, but the big winner was "The Godfather," and the headlines came when Marlon Brandon refused his Best Actor Oscar.
The year of "The Godfather Part II," "Chinatown," "The Conversation" and "Lenny" also had one of the most challenging, unusual posters.
The first time Meryl Streep was named Best Actress, in 1983, the Oscar poster looked like a slick ad for a San Fernando Valley nightly-news show.
Officially, the 73rd Oscars were the 2000 Academy Awards – but the Academy couldn't resist playing off the date the show was held, so that year's poster hinged on graphically misidentifying the Oscar year.
Producer Laura Ziskin had to get special permission so that comic-book artist Alex Ross could have the Oscar statuette change position and move the sword away from his body.
Pop artist Burton Morris raised eyebrows by making the papparazzo (who's not even dressed for the Oscars) more prominent than the Oscar in 2004.
In 2006, Joan Maloney used cropped photos of past Oscar winners; anonymity was part of the point, although in this version the statuette is being cradled by Audrey Hepburn.
A couple of times, Oscar posters have gone with movie quotes, which in this case ranged from "Rosebud" to "Frodo!"
The last Oscar hosts to be pictured on the poster: Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin, whose 2009 job at the helm was not particularly well received.
The 2010 poster, the final part of a multi-image "you're invited" campaign, was as clean and classic as it gets.
You'd think the return of Billy Crystal might have been celebrated on last year's poster, but instead the Academy went with a generic tagline: "Celebrate the movies in all of us."
Is Seth MacFarlane the first Oscar host to get name-above-the-title billing on an Academy Awards poster? He might be, on a poster for the 85th Oscars. Courtesy of the AMPAS archives and Margaret Herrick Library, here's a gallery of Oscar posters through the years.
