Most Academy Awards are taken home and live happily ever after. Kate Winslet, Emma Thompson, and Susan Sarandon have spoken of keeping theirs in their bathrooms. But some Oscars have experienced dramatic events worthy of movies of their own. Even mysteries.
Related: 10 Screen Greats Never Voted Oscar’s “Best”
10 Clark Gable
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MGM loaned Clark Gable to Columbia Pictures for It Happened One Night (1934), allegedly as punishment for his affair with Joan Crawford. Gable doubted his comedic ability and, on the first day of shooting, reportedly said, “Let’s get this over with.” Yet this classic rom-com brought him his only Academy Award as part of the film’s sweep of all five major categories.
While Gable appreciated the honor, he had little interest in the award itself and gave it to his young godson, Richard Lang, who admired it. After Gable’s death, Lang gave the statuette to the actor’s son, John Clark Gable. In 1996, John Clark put it up for sale through Christie’s auction house.
The anonymous winning bid of $607,500 proved to be from Steven Spielberg. He donated the award back to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, stating, “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.”[1]
9 Dudley Nichols
Long before George C. Scott or Marlon Brando, Dudley Nichols was the first to decline an Oscar. MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer created the Academy in 1927 in an effort to head off the rise of labor unions. Dissatisfied with the limited protections the Academy provided them, Nichols and other writers revitalized the Writers Guild of America ( now the Screen Writers’ Guild) in 1933 to present a unified front in contract negotiations for better pay and proper credit.
When Nichols won an Academy Award for the screenplay of The Informer (1935), he refused to attend the ceremony to receive it. The award was sent to him, and he sent it back with a letter explaining, “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.” Once most of the Guild’s goals were achieved, Nichols took possession of his unclaimed Oscar in 1938.[2]
8 Katharine Hepburn
Over almost five decades, Katharine Hepburn racked up 12 Oscar nominations, with wins for Morning Glory (1933), Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (1967), The Lion in Winter (1968), and On Golden Pond (1981). She never snubbed the ceremony but simply said, “As for me, prizes are nothing. My prize is my work.” The only time she attended the event was in 1974 when she presented the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award to her long-time friend, producer Lawrence Weingarten.
Hepburn’s first Oscar was lost when her summer home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, was swept off its foundation by the Great New England Hurricane of September 21, 1938 (before such storms were named), but it was eventually recovered.
In 2007, Hepburn’s estate loaned all four of her Oscars to the Smithsonian to accompany a display in the National Portrait Gallery titled “KATE: A Centennial Celebration.” The statuette that survived the hurricane stands out for having tarnished over time and being slightly shorter than its companions, which are mounted on a taller base due to a design change in 1945.[3]
7 Hattie McDaniel
Hattie McDaniel’s award for Gone with the Wind (1939) made her the first Black actor to be honored by the Academy, but breaking down that barrier was dramatic in itself. Racial segregation barred her from attending the film’s Atlanta premiere despite the threatened boycott of Clark Gable, her friend from their work together in China Seas (1935).
Producer David O. Selznick was persuaded to nominate McDaniel after she plopped a stack of her glowing reviews on his desk. He then had to call in a favor to have her admitted to the award ceremony at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub, which remained segregated until 1959. For her big night, McDaniel was exiled to a small table off to the side, separated from the other attendees.
At that time, the winners for Best Supporting Actor or Actress received a vertical plaque with a small, raised figure of Oscar rather than the familiar statuette. Upon McDaniel’s death in 1952, she intended that her award go to historically black Howard University, but its path there was complicated, and it eventually went missing from the school in the early 1970s. Finally, on October 1, 2023, a ceremony titled “Hattie’s Come Home” celebrated the Academy’s replacement of her plaque, now proudly displayed in Howard’s Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts.[4]
6 Gone with the Wind
Since 1951, all Oscar recipients have signed an agreement to sell the coveted trophies only back to the Academy (price: $10, later reduced to $1), but a brisk market remains for earlier awards. Among the eight competitive Oscars given to Gone with the Wind (1939), some found their way into unexpected hands.
Vivien Leigh’s Best Actress award was purchased at a 1993 auction by a well-known collector for a then-record $510,000. In 1999, GWTW’s Oscar for Best Picture was anticipated to sell for $300,000 until Michael Jackson bought it for $1.54 million. According to Jackson’s estate, when he died ten years later, the statuette was nowhere to be found.
Another GWTW Oscar went far more cheaply. Lyle Wheeler was known as the “dean of Hollywood art directors” for his work on more than 350 films, including Rebecca (1940), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), and The King and I (1956). However, later in life, he lost his five Oscars when he was unable to pay the rent on the storage space where he kept them. Its contents were sold to settle the debt. Shortly before Wheeler died in 1990, a fan purchased his award for The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and returned it to him.[5]
5 Orson Welles
Orson Welles had no love for the Academy, and the feeling was mutual. Though Citizen Kane (1941) earned nine nominations, including Best Picture, its lone win came for Best Writing, Original Screenplay, which Welles shared with Herman Mankiewicz. By Welles’s death in 1985, the whereabouts of his Oscar were unknown. When his widow died soon after and their daughter, Beatrice, inherited his estate, the award was assumed lost, and she was given a replacement in 1988.
Six years later, the original Oscar surprisingly appeared for auction with a minimum bid of $250,000. The current owner had purchased it from a cinematographer who claimed Welles had given it to him in 1974 while they worked together. Beatrice sued, and the court determined the Oscar had merely been loaned for a movie prop.
In 2003, Beatrice tried to sell the original to fund her charity work in animal rescue. The Academy objected, claiming that even though Citizen Kane predated the no-sale agreement, its award was covered by Beatrice’s signature for the replacement. After much legal wrangling, she retained possession on a technicality, then sold it to a California nonprofit for an undisclosed sum. In 2011, the award that meant little to Orson Welles sold again to an anonymous buyer for $861,542.[6]
4 Judy Garland
On February 29, 1940, the Academy honored Judy Garland with a Juvenile Award “for her outstanding performance as a screen juvenile during the past year” for her work in both Babes in Arms and The Wizard of Oz. This half-size statuette, which she called “The Munchkin Award,” was the only Oscar recognition Garland would ever receive. In 1958, her then-husband/manager, Sidney Luft, reported it lost or stolen. The Academy replaced it with a full-size statuette and had Garland sign the resale prohibition.
Even after their divorce and Garland’s death, Luft retained a wealth of her memorabilia. When he put the replacement Oscar up for auction in 1993 with a starting price of $90,000, the sale was blocked by the Academy, and he gave the award to their daughter, Lorna. In 2000, the even more rare Juvenile Award miraculously re-appeared online, priced at $3 million. The Academy again filed legal action against Luft, this time calling for forfeiture, $150,000 in statutory damages, and unspecified punitive damages. The Academy won its case, and the Munchkin Award found there was no place like home.[7]
3 Margaret O’Brien
When Margaret O’Brien was given her Juvenile Award for playing Judy Garland’s little sister in Meet Me in St. Louis, the seven-year-old was most excited about receiving it from her idol, Bob Hope. In 1954, a maid took the statuette home to polish it, and both disappeared. The Academy provided a replacement, but O’Brien never gave up hope of finding the original.
Fast forward four decades. Two resellers combing a Pasadena City College flea market paid $500 for a pint-sized Oscar bearing a name neither recognized. Weeks later, the Academy’s executive director was informed of an award in the catalog of an upcoming auction. Upon confirming it was O’Brien’s original, he contacted the finders, who agreed to return it. While there was no reward, one of them had a simple request: “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, he got his wish. The Academy held a press conference, and O’Brien received her award for a second time.
When O’Brien later appeared on an Oprah episode about lost treasures, Oprah accidentally dropped it, resulting in a small dent on its head. With the long-lost little Oscar safe in a locked display case in O’Brien’s home, she has said, “I’ll never give it to anyone to polish again.”[8]
2 Shelley Winters
Born Shirley Schrift to working-class parents of Austrian Jewish descent, Shelley Winters hardly seemed destined for acting honors. Though she attempted to audition for the plum role of Scarlett O’Hara while still in her teens, she started her Hollywood career at age twenty-three playing B-movie blonde bombshells who often suffered a tragic fate. Her big break came in A Double Life (1947) as yet another murder victim.
Winters had to make herself unglamorous to earn her first of four Academy Award nominations, playing the pregnant girlfriend who is drowned in A Place in the Sun (1951). During the filming of The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), she met Anne’s father and told him 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 that promise, and her award is displayed in a glass case near the exit.[9]
1 Dalton Trumbo
Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo won two Oscars for Best Motion Picture Story, yet waited many years for one and never lived to see the other. As a member of what became known as the Hollywood Ten, he was blacklisted during the Red Scare for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He spent months in federal prison for contempt of Congress. Upon release, he was forced to write under the names of various “fronts.”
For Roman Holiday (1953), the screenplay writer Ian McLellan Hunter was also credited for Trumbo’s Oscar-winning story, and he accepted the award, only to soon be blacklisted himself. Trumbo was honored again for The Brave One (1956) under the name Robert Rich. When the mysterious Rich was not present to accept “his” award, he was said to be at the hospital with his wife in labor. Or maybe living in Europe.
Three years later, the Academy Board of Governors officially ended its blacklist, and Trumbo was properly named on Spartacus (1960) and Exodus (1960). In 1975, the president of the Academy hand-delivered the long-overdue award for The Brave One to the ailing Trumbo at his home. Trumbo died the following year. Hunter’s son never surrendered the Oscar given to his father. Still, in 1993, Trumbo’s widow was given a replacement for Roman Holiday as part of a special screening of the film.[10]