Academy's lawsuit to stop the sale of Pickford's Oscar proceeds
November 20, 2007 | 3:47
pm
The motion-picture academy's lawsuit to halt the sale of Mary Pickford's Oscars will proceed now that a venue for the trial has been set — Riverside County, California. The niece of Charles "Buddy" Rogers, who was married to Pickford actually wishes to sell only one — her best-actress statuette for "Coquette" — but "the academy claims it has the right to buy the statuettes for $10 each," reports Variety. READ MORE
The Academy has already lost: (a) The venue is the home of one of Pickford's heirs, not LA County, so the jury's more likely to sympathize with the heirs. (b) The niece only wants to sell the pre-1950 Oscar; nothing in the current contract makes it truly binding on pre-1950 awards, and if they did have such language in the 1976 contract it's unlikely they would have removed it since then. (The worst the Academy can do with pre-1950 sellers is expel them; that's not an option with an heir.) Marcia Clark had better odds...
Posted by: RBBrittain | November 20, 2007 at 10:26 PM