64th Academy Awards for the third consecutive year. Three weeks earlier, in a ceremony held at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles on March 7, the Academy Awards for Technical Achievement were presented by host Tom Hanks. "The Silence of the Lambs" won five awards including Best Picture. Other winners included "" with four awards, "Beauty and the Beast", "Bugsy", and "JFK" with two, and "City Slickers", "", "The Fisher King", "In the Shadow of the Stars", "Manipulation", "Mediterraneo", "Session Man", and "Thelma & Louise" with one. The telecast garnered more than 44 million viewers in the United States. The nominees for
Academy Awards to their statuettes at an inscription-processing station at the Governor's Ball, a party held immediately after the Oscar ceremony. The R.S. Owens company has engraved nameplates made before the ceremony, bearing the name of every potential winner. The nameplates for the non-winning nominees are later recycled. Since 1950, the statuettes have been legally encumbered by the requirement that neither winners nor their heirs may sell the statuettes without first offering to sell them back to the Academy for US$1. If a winner refuses to agree to this stipulation, then the Academy keeps the statuette. Academy Awards not protected by this