The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has lowered the gavel on a planned auction of Orson Welles' 1942 Citizen Kane Oscar.
The statuette was supposed to be part of an upcoming Christie's New York sale of entertainment memorabilia. But the Motion Picture Academy was able to nix those plans by citing a loophole--per a 1951 bylaw about Oscar resale, the Academy has first dibs on all Oscars up for sale, meaning it could buy back Welles' award for a measly buck.
Oscars can be hot commodities at auction. Ronald Colman's Best Actor trophy for A Double Life sold at Christie's last year for $174,500, and with Welles' a bona fide Hollywood icon and Citizen Kane ranked by the American Film Institute as the greatest American film, his Oscar was expected to get way more. It was the big selling point in a cache of Welles' goodies estimated to fetch upwards of $400,000.
Academy Executive Director Bruce Davis says he is puzzled that the Oscar even made it to the auction block to begin with (it was even featured on the cover of the auction catalog). He claims the Academy and Christie's had agreed to hold off on the auction.
"We have a letter from Christie's general counsel assuring us that the Oscar would not be offered for sale until the legal issues are resolved," Davis told the New York Times.
Indeed, the Oscar, Welles' award, for Best Screenplay, was shared with cowriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, is the center of a whirlwind of lawsuits and red tape that reads a bit like a Hollywood screenplay.
In 1988, three years after Welles' death, his youngest daughter and sole heir, Beatrice, requested a duplicate Oscar from the Academy, believing the original had been lost. By then, the group had passed a rule requiring all winners sign an agreement giving the Academy the right to purchase any Oscar put up for sale for only $1. The Academy made Beatrice sign such an agreement before giving her a copy of her dad's statuette.
Because of this, Davis says, the Academy's bases are covered. "We gave [Beatrice] a duplicate, and fortunately we also had her sign a version of the winner's agreement at that time, which also covered the original, should it ever surface," he told the Times.
The original Oscar did surface in 1994 at Sotheby's London auction house. Apparently the Hollywood heavyweight gave the golden guy to cinematographer and friend Gary Graver after shooting a scene on Welles' unfinished 1970s film The Other Side of the Wind, in which the director used his Oscar as a prop.
Graver, who considered the gesture a bequeathment, proceeded to sell it to Bay Holding company in 1994 for $50,000. Bay then passed it along to Sotheby's for auction.
Once Beatrice got wind of the sale, however, she quickly but the kibosh on the auction, successfully suing both Graver and Bay Holdings--much to Graver's chagrin.
"He gave it to me and told me to keep it," Graver sniped to the Times. "She never saw it before in her life. Orson had given it to me, and she went to court and said, 'I want it.' That's like me taking you to court and saying I want to take your car."
Beatrice Welles, who in February sued AOL Time Warner's Turner Entertainment division seeking to regain the copyright to Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons or at least 20 percent of profits from reissues and home video and DVD sales, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
But it seems the she got a taste of her own medicine this week in New York. "The Oscar has been withdrawn," a Christie's spokeswoman told the Times. That means Beatrice Welles is stuck with two Oscars, her father's original prize and the duplicate copy.
The rest of the Welles-related lot will still be sold off as planned, however.
The nixing of the Citizen Kane Oscar auction may have saved Steven Spielberg some money. The director is a veteran Oscar snapper-upper, having purchased several of the golden guys at auction over the years and returned them to the Academy. He rescued Clark Gable's Best Actor Oscar for It Happened One Night (shelling out $607,500 in 1996) and Bette Davis' trophies for Jezebel (paying $578,000 in 2001) and Dangerous ($207,500 last year).
Kevin Spacey paid six figures for composer George Stoll's trophy only to hand it over for preservation. And the widow of the late Billy Wilder gave back all six Oscars he won, including his Thalberg Award.
Following Spielberg's Jezebel donation, the Academy issued a statement that read: "The Academy Award is a highly-respected honor within the film community. It is not just a trophy handed out on a televised show or another piece of movie memorabilia. It has a deep-seated significance to those who win it and those of us who make our living in the Industry don't like to think of it as an item that might end up on the mantel of someone who hadn't earned it."