If you watch the Academy Awards, then you’re likely familiar with his name, but you may not know who he is. The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award is presented periodically to an “individual in the motion picture industry whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry.” Recipients include Elizabeth Taylor in 1993 for her work with AIDs and, most recently, Geena Davis in 2019 for founding the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media.

The award was named for actor Jean Hersholt, whose film career began in 1915 after he emigrated from Denmark to the United States. His career spanned five decades with more than 140 film projects to his name. Hersholt’s characters varied from an abusive father in SUSAN LENOX: HER FALL AND RISE (’31) to the gruff grandfather of Shirley Temple in HEIDI (’37). But his roles of generosity off screen were even more compelling and the effects of Hersholt’s benevolence are still felt today in Los Angeles.

In 1921, top Hollywood stars including Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin helped create the Motion Picture Relief Fund — now known as the Motion Picture and Television Fund. The fund is a charitable organization that financially helps those in the motion picture or television business who have limited resources. It was created in response to film stars who were destitute when they died, such as Marie Prevost or Karl Dane.

As president of the fund for 18 years, Hersholt founded the Motion Picture Country House in Woodland Hills, CA, a retirement community for those who worked in the film industry. The fund purchased 41 acres of land, which Hersholt found in 1940. Mary Pickford and Hersholt ceremoniously broke ground on the property, and famed architect William Pereira, who designed the Los Angeles International Airport in 1958, designed the home. The completed building opened on Sept. 27, 1942, with 3,000 members of the film community in attendance, according to the Motion Picture and Television Fund.

In Louella Parsons’ Old Time Players Happy in New Home article, former silent film comedian Kate Price, who was ill and lived in the home after it opened, said that Hersholt would visit the home’s residents every day.

The home still operates today, housing more than 200 residents who worked in all facets of the entertainment business including actors, cinematographers or set designers. Norma Shearer and Hattie McDaniel both received care at the home and, most recently, film editor Anne V. Coates and actress Mary Carlisle lived at the home; both passed away in 2018.

“He insisted that we must have a place of our own that our people in need could go to,” Paramount studio head Y. Frank Freeman said in his eulogy for Hersholt. “The Country Home stands as a memorial to this man. He did more from human good in this industry than any other man.”

During World War II, Hersholt helped direct the Danish-American War Relief Fund and was knighted by the king of Denmark in 1948 for war efforts. Hersholt was also an avid collector of Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales and writings. He worked to have the stories translated into English, according to the University of Southern Denmark’s Hans Christian Andersen Centre. These stories include Thumbelina and The Emperor’s New Clothes. In 1951, Hersholt and his wife, Via, donated their Andersen collection of 963 items to the U.S. Library of Congress, which is considered the most comprehensive collection in America of first editions, manuscripts, letters and pictures.

After a battle with cancer, Hersholt died on June 2, 1956. When the next Academy Awards ceremony was held in March 1957, the Academy paid tribute to Hersholt and his work with the first Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. The first honor was awarded to Y. Frank Freeman. Hersholt was president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1945 to 1949. He received two Academy Awards — both acknowledging his distinguished service to the motion picture industry.

“I have never known a less selfish man than Jean Hersholt,” Freeman said at Hersholt’s funeral. “His sole objective was to serve his fellow man.”