Oscar For Sale

For those artists lucky enough to win an Oscar, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has strict rules in case winners should ever wish to part with their golden prize. In 1951, the Academy included in the regulations that winners are not allowed to sell their Oscar without first offering it to the Academy for $10 (today the sum is a mere $1). This rule also applies to those who inherited or were gifted an Oscar.

A number of times the Academy has taken legal action when an Oscar was being offered for sale. For instance, in 2014 the Academy found their 1951 rule had been violated when an Oscar was sold at auction by the heirs of art director Joseph Wright, who had won the award for his work on My Gal Sal (1942). Joseph Tutalo, Wright's nephew, had consigned the statuette to Briarbrook Auctions and auction house Nate D. Sanders then bought the Oscar from Briarbrook for $79,200. The Academy subsequently went to court, arguing that although Wright had won the Oscar before 1951 he had kept his Academy membership until his death in 1985, which made the sale illegal. Eventually the judge ruled in the Academy's favour and the Academy reclaimed Wright's Oscar for $10.

Spencer Tracy with his Best Actor Oscar for Boys Town (1938) and Bette Davis with her Best Actress Oscar for Jezebel (1938), the latter Oscar sold at auction in 2001 to an anonymous bidder (who turned out to be Steven Spielberg).

Oscars have been sold succesfully in the past, though. For instance, in 1999 David Selznick's Best Picture statuette for Gone with the Wind (1939) was sold to Michael Jackson for a whopping $1.5 million, a trophy that unfortunately went missing years after Jackson's death (I couldn't find information whether it's turned up yet). Magician David Copperfield bought Michael Curtiz's 1943 Casablanca Oscar for $232,000 in 2003 and made a huge profit when he sold it at auction for more than $2 million ten years later. And director Steven Spielberg purchased several Oscars, including Clark Gable's 1934 Oscar for It Happened One Night (for $607,500 in 1996) and Bette Davis' 1938 Best Actress trophy for Jezebel (for $578,000 in 2001). However, Spielberg didn't buy these trophies for himself but, for the sake of preserving film history, returned them to the Academy instead.

Since 1951 Oscar winners are obliged to sign a document saying they won't sell their trophy without offering it to the Academy first. Here is the "Receipt for Academy Award Statuette" signed by Audrey Hepburn in May 1954, after she had won her Best Actress Oscar for Roman Holiday.

Via: Rare Audrey Hepburn (original source: The Audrey Hepburn Treasures)

Audrey Hepburn with the only Oscar of her career

Postponing the Oscars

Four times in Oscar history, the awards ceremony was not held as scheduled but postponed to a later date. The first time was in 1938 due to the floods in Los Angeles; the second time in 1968 after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King; again in 1981 after the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, and finally last year due to the Covid crisis. 

Sammy Davis Jr. and Martin Luther King sharing a laugh in 1965

The 40th Academy Awards ceremony was scheduled for 8 April 1968 but eventually took place two days later. On 4 April Dr. Martin Luther King had been assassinated and many stars wanted to attend his funeral which was held on 9 April. Among the stars were four African-Americans who were to take part in the Oscar ceremony, i.e. Sammy Davis Jr., Louis Armstrong, Sidney Poitier and Diahann Carroll (the first two as performers, the latter two as presenters). The four had informed the Academy that they would not appear at the Oscars if the scheduled date of 8 April was maintained. On The Tonight Show Davis stated: "I certainly think any black man should not appear. I find it morally incongruous to sing Talk To The Animals while the man who could make a better world for my children is lying in state." (Talk To The Animals was the nominated song from Doctor Dolittle which Davis would perform at the ceremony and which eventually won the Oscar for Best Song.) Faced with the possible absence of several of the ceremony's key players, Gregory Peck, then president of the Academy, held an emergency meeting with the Board of Governors who unanimously decided to postpone the Oscars by two days. With the news of the delayed ceremony, Davis, Poitier, Armstrong and Carroll all announced their return to the show. 

Someone who also wanted the Oscars to be postponed was Barbra Streisand, who was also scheduled to be a presenter at the ceremony. This is the telegram Barbra sent to Gregory Peck two days after King's assassination.

Source: oscars.org

Barbra Streisand with Gregory Peck at the 1969 Golden Globes

They will have little time to worry about getting their salaries cut

In 1927, MGM's big boss Louis B. Mayer decided to found an organisation that would settle labour disputes without unions. To discourage writers, directors and actors to get organised and start demanding pensions, health benefits etc., Mayer got together with a group of industry people and created the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). While initially focusing on labour issues, the Academy soon decided to also give out annual awards for achievements in filmmaking (again at the suggestion of Mayer). Of the several committees AMPAS formed in those early days, one of them was the committee for Awards of Merits. This committee would be instrumental in shaping the awards and the awards ceremony, with its efforts ultimately leading to the first ceremony being held on 16 May 1929. The "award of merit for distinctive achievement", then presented in 12 categories, is now of course known as the Academy Award or by its nickname Oscar. 

In the 1920s, Darryl F. Zanuck, mostly known as producer and executive for Twentieth Century Fox, was under contract to Warner Brothers. He wrote stories for the successful Rin-Tin-Tin series, and also wrote more than 40 scripts under pseudonyms before becoming a producer. On 7 November 1927, Zanuck wrote a letter to Frank Woods (secretary of AMPAS), discussing the Awards of Merit committee, apparently after Woods had talked about it in his letter to Zanuck. Zanuck calls the committee "a marvelous thing for the Industry", as the awards would surely keep the minds of writers and directors busy and keep them from worrying about their salaries. Zanuck also makes flippant nomination suggestions, putting forward Rin-Tin-Tin as "most popular player". The implication in Zanuck's letter that there was an ulterior motive for creating the Oscars has at one time been corroborated by Louis B. Mayer himself: "I found that the best way to handle [filmmakers] was to hang medals all over them [...] If I got them cups and awards they'd kill themselves to produce what I wanted. That's why the Academy Award was created." [source]

Via: twitter

Transcript:

November 7th, 1927

Mr. Frank Woods, Secretary,
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,
6912 Hollywood Boulevard
Hollywood, Calif.

Dear Frank:

Your letter received and digested. I think this Awards of Merits committee is a marvelous thing for the Industry, as it will cause so many arguments and discussions among the various directors and writers who did or did not get the award that they will have little time to worry about getting their salaries cut.

Now that the salary cut is all over with, we need some topic like this to start discussing, and I want to congratulate you and your Board of Directors for thinking of such a wonderful subject to keep the minds of the writers and directors busy for the next six months.

My nominations for the award of merit are as follows:

Producer -- Jack L. Warner.
Asssociate Producer -- Darryl Francis Zanuck
Director -- Any Warner Brothers Director (Same to be selected by drawing straws.)
Writer -- Any writer under contract to Warner Brothers.
Most popular player -- Rin-Tin-Tin

Will you kindly submit this list to the balance of the committee, so that we may get together on same.

All kidding aside, I think the magazine committee functioned quite well in their first issue, and I would certainly appreciate the invitation to donate an article to one of the forthcoming issues. Once upon a time, I too was a magazine subscribe, and it looks like this magazine is going to give me an opportunity to prove it.

Sincerely yours,

Darryl Zanuck (signed)


Note: 
The Academy's magazine for which Zanuck hoped to write an article was very short lived. The November 1927 issue was the first and only issue of the magazine.

Darryl F. Zanuck, studio boss Jack Warner, Rin Tin Tin and Lee Duncan (the dog's owner).