There is a story in TheNewsTribune.com today about a legal dispute between the heirs of three Oscar statuettes and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Statues awarded after 1950 are legally encumbered and winners and their heirs must give the Academy first right of refusal to buy back the award for a nominal sum. Oscar statuettes that have sold in the open market that are not subject to this requirement have sold for large sums of money.
It should prove interesting to see how this story below concludes. Please go to TheNewsTribune.com for the full story with photos:
Oscars silent while others argue their fate
SOREN ANDERSEN; [email protected]
Published: January 20th, 2008 12:18 AM
Tacoma natives and cousins Virginia Casey and Kim Boyer have enjoyed a long and personal relationship with a golden guy named Oscar. Lately, though, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has stepped in to rain on the relationship parade.
Boyer, who lives in Everett, and Casey, who still makes her home in Tacoma, were photographed often in Oscar’s presence in family-album type snapshots. That’s hardly surprising since Casey and Boyer consider Oscar part of the family.
He came into their lives in the early ’80s when their aunt, Beverly Ricono, also a native Tacoman, married Charles “Buddy” Rogers, who was a movie star, big-band leader and the widower of silent film superstar Mary Pickford.
Pickford won the second Oscar awarded in the Best Actress category for her performance in the 1929 melodrama “Coquette.” In 1976, she was awarded a second honorary Oscar for her contributions to the film industry, which included co-founding the United Artists studio and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Rogers, who was married to Pickford for nearly 42 years, received his own Oscar in 1985 for his humanitarian work.
One couple. Two stars. Three Oscars.
PLANS FOR CHARITY
Pickford died in 1979. Buddy Rogers died in 1999. When Beverly Rogers died last January, she willed the two honorary Oscars to her nieces. Her handwritten will instructed that Pickford’s “Coquette” Oscar be sold and the proceeds donated to charity. And that’s when the academy stepped in.
Since 1950, the academy has required all Oscar winners to sign an agreement giving the organization the right of first refusal to buy the statuettes back for $10 from anyone wishing to sell them. But the agreement didn’t cover Pickford’s 1929 Oscar.
When the academy learned of Beverly Rogers’ instructions for the first Pickford Oscar, the organization filed suit to stop the sale. It claimed the agreement Pickford signed for her 1976 lifetime achievement award also covered the 1929 statuette.
Boyer, who is a co-executor of the estate along with Casey and Boyer’s mother, disputes the academy’s claim: “In her will, my aunt stated it was not her (Pickford’s) signature on the contract. And she stated in her will that she wanted a Buddy and Beverly Rogers foundation to be created” using money from the sale of Pickford’s Oscar.
“The will states we have to sell the 1929 Oscar,” Boyer said, “and we’re bound to distribute it (money from the sale) to charity.”
Boyer estimates that the 1929 Oscar would fetch at least $500,000 at auction. In a recent meeting with an attorney for the academy, she proposed that the organization ask members to donate $500,000 to her aunt’s favorite charity, the Buddy Rogers Youth Symphony in Southern California’s Coachella Valley. Then, the heirs would give the Pickford Oscar to the academy. Boyer cited the precedent of Steven Spielberg, who paid big bucks for three Oscars that have come on the market and then donated the statuettes to the academy.
The academy countered by offering to donate $25,000 a year for two years to the symphony. As part of that offer, it wanted both the 1929 Oscar and the 1976 honorary Oscar turned over to the academy.
When Boyer proposed that the academy donate $25,000 over 18 years, the academy told her the original offer was off the table and the matter was being referred to the organization’s legal department. “And sure enough, we were hit with a lawsuit,” she said. It was filed last August.
“We are seeking to prevent the sale of all three statuettes,” said Leslie Unger, director of communications for the academy. “We are seeking a declaration from the court that all three of those statuettes are bound by our winner’s agreement and therefore cannot be sold without providing the academy with first right of refusal.”
JUST ONE OSCAR FOR SALE
A Los Angeles judge has referred the matter to mediation, giving both sides until August to try to resolve the dispute. If they can’t, it likely will go to trial.
Unger said if the court rules in the academy’s favor and stops the sale, the family can retain possession of all three statuettes.
Boyer said she was particularly stung by the suit’s allegation that the family intended to put all three Oscars up for sale. “We have never, ever discussed selling Buddy’s or Mary’s later Oscars,” she said, adding, “we would never want to sell them.”
Casey’s family “will be receiving one of them, and my family will be receiving the other,” said Boyer, a Wilson High School graduate who quit her job as a secretary at the Snohomish School District to devote her time to the handling of her aunt’s estate. “We cherish and treasure them and feel humbled that we inherited them.”
“We talked about it all the time, and my aunt said these are going to stay in the family,” Casey said.
In the years Buddy and Beverly were married, Casey, Boyer and other members of Beverly’s extended Tacoma family visited them often at their mansion in Beverly Hills and hobnobbed with Hollywood royalty. “I’ve met Bob Hope several times and Mickey Rooney,” said Casey, a staff manager at McNeil Island Corrections Center. “I’ve met Phyllis Diller. I’ve been at George Hamilton’s house. I’ve met Sammy Davis Jr.”
‘WE ALWAYS HAD AWE OF THEM’
And then there were photo sessions with Oscar. During Casey’s visits, the Oscars sat on Beverly’s baby grand piano, and the aunt would encourage her niece to pick one up and have her maid snap a photo.
“I’d hold it up, and I would smile and say, ‘I’d like to thank all the little people who made this possible,'” Casey recalled.
“It was all lighthearted,” she said. “We always had awe of them” and “total respect.”
“They’re heavy,” Casey said, and as she held one, she’d think to herself, “is this like the coolest thing ever.”
And where are the Oscars now? Pickford’s 1976 statuette is on display in a special exhibit of movie memorabilia at a Southern California movie theater. The other two “are in a very safe place,” Boyer said, adding, “I won’t say where.”
Jason De Bord