Since 1950, there is a curious agreement between the American Film Academy and the winners of their Oscars. Before selling statuettes to someone, the owners should offer them for the redemption of the Film Academy – for a symbolic $ 1. Despite such an agreement, the awards are sometimes sold to third-party buyers, and in December of this year two more Oscar statuettes will be put up for auction.
Bidding auction Profiles in History will be held in Los Angeles on December 11. Among other lots will be two Oscar statuettes, received by the winners of the prize for the Best Film. Buyers will be able to purchase an award from producer Irving Talberg for the 1935 Mutiny on Bounty ribbon, whose initial price ranges around 200-300 thousand dollars. Also, the Oscar will go under the hammer for the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” film of 1947, which will start trading at a mark of 150-200 thousand dollars.
This is not the first time that the Oscar statuettes are on sale. In 1999, singer Michael Jackson paid $ 1.5 million to purchase producer David O. Selznick’s award for Gone With the Wind. In 2011, the descendants of Orson Welles, the director of the film “Citizen Kane”, sold him an Oscar for 860 thousand dollars. In 2012, 15 statuettes went under the hammer at once, among them were the awards of actress Vivien Leigh and screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz. The academy was outraged by the bidding, but could not stop them, as only the statuettes for films awarded before 1950 were involved in the auction — that is, before the agreement on the transfer of the Oscars back to the Film Academy for 1 dollar came into force.