Security at the Governors Ball are looking for this guy, who grabbed Frances McDormand’s Oscar and ran out with it. Wolfgang Puck’s photographer stopped him, got the Oscar back, and the guy disappeared back into the ball. Apparently Frances has said to let him go. #Oscars #Drama pic.twitter.com/5tlsx4Ulwt
— Cara Buckley (@caraNYT) March 5, 2018
The guy pictured above allegedly stole Frances McDormand's Oscar, was caught red-handed, and tried to disappear back into the Oscar ball before being arrested and charged with grand theft.
Sam Rockwell could've just tortured him, beat him up and tossed him out a window in an ultimately endearing way and we could've called it even, but either way, it appears McDormand doesn't want the matter pursued.
Alice Brady receives her Oscar — not a replacement! — back in the day before they were statuettes
It's interesting because Mother Jones published a fascinating piece on the history of lost, stolen and/or missing Oscars ...
In the Mother Jones piece, Oscar scholar Olivia Rutigliano's obsession with missing statuettes (and plaques, don't forget plaques!) is profiled, making for a cool glimpse into the role of urban legend when it comes to Hollywood legends.
The most famous stolen Oscar wasn't; Alice Brady won in 1938 for Old Chicago, and the story went that her Oscar was accepted by a mystery man and then vanished. This story may have been invented in the '90s, because as Rutigliano discovered, the Academy knew all along that the man who accepted her Oscar plaque was Old Chicago's director! Not only that, but he had delivered it to Brady, who was photographed holding the award — so she definitely received it before dying of cancer the following year.
But ... where is it now? Nobody knows.
The same is true for Hattie McDaniel's historic Oscar for Gone with the Wind. The first person of color to win — by decades —McDaniel is one of Oscar's most famous recipients, and her statuette would be among the most desirable to a collector. (It's hard to collect Oscars since any given from 1951 on must be offered to the Academy for $10 or $1 before being sold!)
Yet McDaniel's Oscar is missing. It was allegedly stolen by angry students at Howard University during race riots in the '60s, but Oscar buffs have disproved that rumor:
A group of researchers led by W. Burlette Carter at The George Washington University, for example, spent a year investigating the case of Hattie McDaniel’s stolen Oscar from Howard University. It released a 67-page report on the case in 2011, which theorizes that “the Oscar was not stolen by irate students, upset that Howard would honor McDaniel, but rather was returned to Howard’s Channing Pollack Theater Collection, most likely between the spring of 1971 and the summer of 1972.” The Oscar is still missing.
In all, 79 — now, 80! — Oscars have been reported to have been missing at one time or another ... and 12 are still whereabouts unknown.
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