The academy views the Oscar as a coveted prize that should remain the lifetime property of the winners and their heirs. It is not, officials are keen to point out, a commercial product. In a nutshell, the policy is that a film-maker can earn an Academy Award through excellence in his or her field but the Oscar cannot be bought.
The Oscar won by Orson Welles for his iconic picture Citizen Kane is going under the hammer. The sale, at Sotheby’s auction house in New York last week, has caused consternation in Hollywood, where the gold-plated statuette is seen as the ultimate symbol of film-making achievement. Welles and Herman J Mankiewicz received the award for best screenwriting on the 1941 film classic.
The statuette itself has had an adventurous few decades. Legend has it that the Oscar was lost by Welles before mysteriously turning up in 1994 at a Sotheby’s auction. After a legal tug of war, it eventually ended up in the hands of The Dax Foundation, a Los Angeles-based non-profit group that supports various charitable causes. The foundation has now decided to cash in its prized possession. It has been estimated that the sale could raise over $1m for the group.
But the people who run the Oscars are not happy. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have refused specifically to comment on the sale of Welles’ Oscar. But the organisation is known to frown upon any attempt to profit from its most famous trademark.
The academy views the Oscar as a coveted prize that should remain the lifetime property of the winners and their heirs. It is not, officials are keen to point out, a commercial product. In a nutshell, the policy is that a film-maker can earn an Academy Award through excellence in his or her field — but the Oscar cannot be bought.
To enforce its policy, the academy requires Oscar nominees to sign a contract in which they agree “not to sell or otherwise dispose” of the statuette, should they win. In addition, the agreement requires that a winner who no longer wishes to retain the little gold man should first offer to sell him back to the academy for the not so princely sum of $1. Furthermore, should an Oscar end up on the open market, it can be traced back to the original recipient through a serial number stamped into the gold plating behind his heels.
But the no-sale policy did not come into effect until 1950. And because Citizen Kane predates that year, Welles’ Oscar can legally be put on the market. “They identify excellence in film and go ahead and reward it with the Academy Award. But I also have to say that Orson Wells was a bit of a maverick and what he cared about was making great films,” says Dave Weisman, executive director of the Dax Foundation.
Weisman says he understands from Welles’ family that the late actor-director cared “much more about making things happen in the world that getting awards.
The Citizen Kane Oscar may still end up going home. It is not the first high-profile statuette to go under the hammer. On previous occasions noted Hollywood luminaries such as Steven Spielberg have stepped in to rescue the little guy. The director forked out big sums of money to buy Oscars belonging to Clark Gable and Bette Davis, before donating them back to the academy.
