Buzz
While most Oscar winners enjoy their awards and live happily ever after, stars like Kate Winslet, Emma Thompson, and Susan Sarandon have shared that they keep their Oscars in their bathrooms. However, some have lived through thrilling events worthy of their own cinematic adaptations, even involving mystery.
10. Clark Gable
MGM lent Clark Gable to Columbia Pictures for It Happened One Night (1934), supposedly as retribution for his affair with Joan Crawford. Gable doubted his comedic talents, and on the first day of filming, he supposedly remarked, 'Let’s get this over with.' Despite his doubts, the film went on to win all five major Academy Awards, including one for Gable himself.
Though Gable valued the honor, he had little attachment to the trophy and gave it to his young godson, Richard Lang, who admired it. After Gable’s passing, Lang passed the Oscar on to Gable’s son, John Clark Gable. In 1996, John Clark auctioned it off through Christie’s.
An anonymous bid of $607,500 was later revealed to have come from Steven Spielberg. He decided to return the award to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, saying, "The Oscar statuette is the most personal recognition of good work our industry can ever bestow, and it strikes me as a sad sign of our times that this icon could be confused with a commercial treasure."
9. Dudley Nichols
Long before George C. Scott or Marlon Brando, Dudley Nichols made history as the first to refuse an Oscar. MGM head Louis B. Mayer founded the Academy in 1927 in an attempt to counteract the rise of labor unions. Feeling dissatisfied with the Academy's limited protections, Nichols and fellow writers revived the Screen Writers’ Guild in 1933 to stand together for better pay and fair credit during contract talks.
When Nichols won the Academy Award for his screenplay of The Informer (1935), he chose not to attend the ceremony. The award was mailed to him, but he sent it back with a letter saying, "I deeply regret I am unable to accept this award. To accept it would be to turn my back on nearly 1,000 members of the Screen Writers’ Guild." Nichols finally accepted his Oscar in 1938 after the Guild’s demands were largely met.
8. Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn accumulated 12 Oscar nominations over the course of nearly fifty years, triumphing with wins for Morning Glory (1933), Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (1967), The Lion in Winter (1968), and On Golden Pond (1981). Despite her multiple nominations, she never appeared to snub the Academy, stating, 'As for me, prizes are nothing. My prize is my work.' The only time she attended the Oscar ceremony was in 1974 when she presented the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award to her close friend, producer Lawrence Weingarten.
Hepburn's first Oscar was lost when her summer home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, was carried away by the Great New England Hurricane of September 21, 1938 (before storms were named). However, it was later recovered.
In 2007, Hepburn's estate lent all four of her Oscars to the Smithsonian for a display in the National Portrait Gallery titled 'KATE: A Centennial Celebration.' The statuette that survived the hurricane stands out because it has tarnished over the years and is slightly shorter than the others, which were mounted on taller bases after a design change in 1945.
7. Hattie McDaniel
Hattie McDaniel's Oscar for Gone with the Wind (1939) made her the first Black actor to receive an Academy Award. However, breaking this racial barrier came with its own dramatic challenges. Segregation laws prevented her from attending the film's premiere in Atlanta, even though her friend Clark Gable had threatened to boycott the event in protest of her exclusion, following their collaboration on China Seas (1935).
Producer David O. Selznick was convinced to nominate McDaniel after she placed a stack of glowing reviews on his desk. However, to have her attend the award ceremony at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub (which remained segregated until 1959), Selznick had to call in a favor. On the night of the event, McDaniel was relegated to a small table off to the side, distanced from the other guests.
At the time, the award for Best Supporting Actor or Actress was a vertical plaque featuring a small, raised figure of Oscar, unlike the iconic statuette we recognize today. After McDaniel's death in 1952, she had planned for her Oscar to be donated to historically black Howard University. However, the award's journey there was complicated, and it eventually disappeared from the school in the early 1970s. On October 1, 2023, a ceremony called 'Hattie’s Come Home' was held to celebrate the Academy’s replacement of her plaque, which is now proudly displayed at Howard University’s Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts.
6. Gone with the Wind
Since 1951, all Oscar winners have agreed to sell their trophies exclusively back to the Academy (initially priced at $10, later reduced to $1). Despite this, a lively market still exists for awards from before that time. Among the eight competitive Oscars awarded for Gone with the Wind (1939), some found their way into unexpected hands.
Vivien Leigh’s Oscar for Best Actress was purchased at a 1993 auction by a famous collector for a record-setting $510,000. In 1999, Gone with the Wind’s Oscar for Best Picture was expected to sell for $300,000 until Michael Jackson acquired it for $1.54 million. However, after his death ten years later, the statuette was nowhere to be found, according to his estate.
Lyle Wheeler, known as the 'dean of Hollywood art directors,' worked on over 350 films, including Rebecca (1940), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), and The King and I (1956). Despite his accomplishments, he lost his five Academy Awards when he couldn't afford the rent on the storage unit where they were kept, and his awards were sold to pay off the debt. Before Wheeler passed away in 1990, a fan managed to buy his Oscar for The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and returned it to him.
5. Orson Welles
Orson Welles harbored a deep disdain for the Academy, and that sentiment was reciprocated. Despite receiving nine nominations for Citizen Kane (1941), including Best Picture, it only won Best Writing, Original Screenplay, which Welles shared with Herman Mankiewicz. After Welles’s death in 1985, his Oscar was missing, and when his widow passed away soon after, their daughter, Beatrice, inherited his estate, assuming the award was lost. In 1988, she was provided with a replacement.
Six years later, the original Oscar reappeared at an auction with a starting bid of $250,000. The person selling it claimed they had received it from a cinematographer who said Welles gave it to him in 1974 while they worked together. Beatrice filed a lawsuit, and the court ruled that the Oscar had been lent out as a movie prop, not sold.
In 2003, Beatrice attempted to sell the original Oscar to raise funds for her animal rescue charity. However, the Academy opposed, citing that despite Citizen Kane predating the no-sale agreement, Beatrice's signature on the replacement award covered the original. After prolonged legal battles, she retained possession on a technicality and eventually sold it to a California nonprofit for an undisclosed amount. In 2011, the Oscar, which had little meaning to Orson Welles, was sold again for $861,542 to an anonymous buyer.
4. Judy Garland
On February 29, 1940, Judy Garland received a Juvenile Award from the Academy for her exceptional performance as a screen juvenile in Babes in Arms and The Wizard of Oz. Garland referred to the half-size statuette as 'The Munchkin Award,' and it was the only Oscar she ever received. In 1958, her husband and manager at the time, Sidney Luft, reported the statue as lost or stolen. The Academy replaced it with a full-size Oscar and had Garland sign a resale prohibition agreement.
After their divorce and Garland’s passing, Sidney Luft kept a significant collection of her memorabilia. When he attempted to auction the replacement Oscar in 1993 with a starting bid of $90,000, the Academy intervened, blocking the sale. Luft then gave the award to their daughter, Lorna. In 2000, the rare Juvenile Award miraculously surfaced online with a price tag of $3 million. The Academy once again took legal action, seeking forfeiture, $150,000 in statutory damages, and unspecified punitive damages. The Academy prevailed in court, and the Munchkin Award found its rightful home.
3. Dalton Trumbo
Dalton Trumbo, a screenwriter, won two Oscars for Best Motion Picture Story, yet he had to wait many years for one and never lived to see the other. A member of the Hollywood Ten, he was blacklisted during the Red Scare after refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Trumbo spent several months in federal prison for contempt of Congress. After his release, he had no choice but to write under various pseudonyms for 'front' writers.
For the 1953 film Roman Holiday, Ian McLellan Hunter, who co-wrote the screenplay, received credit for Trumbo's Oscar-winning story, and he was the one to accept the award. However, Hunter was soon blacklisted. Trumbo, on the other hand, later earned recognition for his work on The Brave One (1956) under the pseudonym Robert Rich. When the mysterious Rich was absent at the ceremony to claim his award, it was reported that he was at the hospital with his wife in labor, though some speculated that he might have been in Europe.
In 1960, the Academy Board of Governors officially ended the blacklist, allowing Trumbo to be credited on Spartacus and Exodus. By 1975, Trumbo, now ill, received his long-overdue Oscar for The Brave One at home, delivered by the Academy president. Tragically, he passed away the following year. Though Hunter's son never relinquished the Oscar awarded to his father, Trumbo's widow received a replacement for Roman Holiday in 1993 during a special screening of the film.
2. Shelley Winters
Shelley Winters, born Shirley Schrift to working-class Austrian Jewish parents, didn't initially seem destined for a career in acting. In her teens, she tried for the role of Scarlett O'Hara, but her Hollywood debut came at 23, where she often played tragic B-movie blonde bombshells. Her breakthrough came in A Double Life (1947), where she portrayed yet another victim of murder.
To earn her first of four Oscar nominations, Winters transformed herself to play the unglamorous role of a pregnant girlfriend who meets a tragic end in A Place in the Sun (1951). During filming of The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), she made a promise to Anne Frank's father that if she won an Oscar for playing Mrs. Van Daan, she would donate it to the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam. In 1975, Winters fulfilled her promise, and her Oscar is now on display in a glass case at the museum.
1. Margaret O’Brien
When Margaret O’Brien was honored with her Juvenile Award for portraying Judy Garland's little sister in Meet Me in St. Louis, the seven-year-old was thrilled to receive it from her idol, Bob Hope. However, in 1954, a maid who was asked to polish the statuette took it home, and both the maid and the Oscar disappeared. Though the Academy provided a replacement, O’Brien never gave up hope of finding the original.
Fast forward four decades later. Two resellers scouring a flea market at Pasadena City College spent $500 on a small Oscar that bore a name they didn’t recognize. A few weeks later, the Academy’s executive director was alerted to the item, which was listed in an upcoming auction catalog. After confirming it was O’Brien's missing Oscar, he reached out to the finders, who agreed to return it. Though there was no reward, one of them simply asked, 'Can I get a picture of me handing the Oscar to O’Brien so I can tell friends I once presented an Academy Award?' In February 1995, his wish was granted when O’Brien received her Oscar for a second time at a press conference.
During a later appearance on Oprah’s show about lost treasures, O’Brien accidentally dropped her Oscar, leaving a small dent on its head. With the long-lost award now securely displayed in a locked case in her home, she humorously declared, 'I’ll never give it to anyone to polish again.'
