Oscars statuettes

Each year, the Oscar ceremony reveals its famous Award winners, gives its own fashion show on the red carpet or even becomes the scene of great social demands. For these reasons, it makes the news around the world. But it is sometimes even its symbol itself, the golden statuette, that get talked about for some unusual stories such as in 1938, when Alice Brady won a Supporting Actress Oscar for the movie "In Old Chicago." Since she was too sick to attend the ceremony so a man jumped up onstage to accepted it on her behalf. Unfortunately, she didn't know the stranger and her Oscar was never seen again. Though, dealing with an absent winner is an usual situation the Academy has to face and it usually goes well. But this year 81th Academy Award, held on february 22nd, was quite special. Heath Ledger nomination as best Supporting Actor for his role in ''The Dark Night'' was a tricky situation in awarding posthumous Oscars, which traditionally go to the spouse or to the oldest child. Because he wasn't married and his daughter, Matilda, is only 3, an arrangment had had to be made. Since 1950, winners or their heirs are forbidden from selling their Oscar statuettes and have to sign a legal document known as "The Winner's Agreement'' whose regulation 10 states: "Award winners shall not sell or otherwise dispose of the Oscar statuette nor permit it to be sold or disposed of by operation of law without first offering to sell it to the academy for $1." Is Ledger's case, the statuette will be held in trust by Matilda mother, Michelle Williams, until she reaches the age of 18, at what point she will have to sign the agreement, or the statuette will return to the Academy. This rule has been created in the purpose to protect the trophy to be sold. "The Oscar statuette is obviously the film industry's highest honor, and as such, the Academy has an obligation to protect its standing," says Ric Robertson, executive administrator at the Academy. "We try to keep it as pure as possible and ensure that the only way you can get one is to win one." Most of hollywood filmmakers also share this point of vue and actively help to protect this idea such as

Steven Spielberg did in 1996 when he anonymously bought 34' Clark Gable's best actor Oscar for "It Happened One Night" for $607,500 when it came up to auctions. He then promptly donated it to the Academy. If some winners voluntarily choose to part with their statuette, such as Shelley Winters who gave to the Anne Frank House museum, in Amsterdam, her '59 Oscar awarded for her role in ''The Diary of Anne Frank,'' some of them don't. After Whoopi Goldberg's supporting actress Oscar for ''Ghost,'' was sent out for cleaning, it disappeared. ''We never, ever have problems with shipping, but UPS told us it got lost. Whoopi was pretty upset," reports the Academy's Steve Miessner. The statue was eventually found in a trash bin at the Ontario airport by a security guard and returned to the star, who dropped plans to ever have it cleaned. "Oscar will never leave my house again," she said. Even if the awards are gold-plated britannium whose actual value is estimated at $500, their symbolical value make them very demanded. In 1999, Michael Jackson bought the Best Picture Oscar won by "Gone With the Wind" for $1.5 million. Against the Academy opinion, some of the statuettes had been sold in auction by the past, such as Ronald Colman's 1947 Best Actor prize for "A Double Life" that went at Christie's in 2002 for $175,000, but auction house usually withdraw them. "We still see Oscars come up for auction, but they're generally pre-1950," says Robertson. 2,701 statuettes have been presented since the initial awards banquet on May 16, 1929, which explains which it is hard to protect all of them. The film reel, on which the famous knight stands, has been designed by Cedric Gibbons and features five spokes, signifying the five original branches of the Academy: actors, directors, producers, technicians and writers. If its initial design hasn't really changed since then, some unique statuettes had been created over the years like the one attribued to ventriloquist Edgar Bergen in 1937. The trophy was sporting a movable jaw, as an homage to Charlie McCarthy dummy. A very few filmmakers have had the honor the receive a special Oscar, but even a very fewer of them received 8 at the same time such as Walt Disney did in 1938 when a standard Oscar statuette and seven miniatures honored ''Snow White and the Seven

Dwarfs.'' Some Oscar were even unvoluntarly special, as it was the case during World War II, when oscars had to be made of painted plaster because of a metal shortage. The actual story itself of how the official name of the statuette, the Academy Award of Merit, came to be known as the Oscar is unclear. The most popular story has been that Academy librarian - and eventual executive director - Margaret Herrick believed it looked a lot like her Uncle Oscar. After she made that observation, the Academy staff began calling the award 'Oscar.' The Academy didn't officially use the nickname until 1939, ten years after the first award given. In the absence of being able to win or to buy an Oscar, there is still a possibility to get one for the one who becomes friend with Scotty Bowers, at least for a few hours. When his friend, Nestor Almendros, was nominated for ''Days of Heaven'' in 1978, he was the one who pushed him to go to the ceremony. "He didn't even want to go," recalls Bowers. "He felt the other films and d.p.s stood a much better chance of winning.'' But Almendros won and, forever grateful to his friend, bequeathed his Oscar to Bowers before he died of AIDS in 1992. "It arrived in the mail, and now I keep it at home," adds Bowers, a caterer. "Sometimes I loan it out for a party or show."

Jessica Bordeau