Who Owns Early Film Star's Oscar

September 8, 2008 5:27 PM
Quinn Emanuel on Case of Who Owns Early Film Star's Oscar
Posted by Zach Lowe


How much is an Oscar worth on the private market? Experts have suggested the trophies can fetch anywhere between $500,000 and $1.5 million. And that's the kind of cash the descendants of Charles "Buddy" Rogers, the former husband of silent film star Mary Pickford, hope to fetch by selling the 1929 Best Actress statuette Pickford won for her role in Coquette, to raise proceeds for charity.

One catch: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences claims it has the right to buy the statue first--for $10.

A Los Angeles trial court judge gave the Academy its first victory in the case yesterday, ruling against the Rogers-Pickford team's motion for summary judgment and ordering the case to a jury trial.

Christopher Tayback of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges is representing the Academy. The firm is the Academy's regular outside counsel.

Mark Passin of Dreier Stein Kahan Browne Woods George, an entertainment litigation boutique, is representing the Rogers heirs.

The Academy established the $10 first-refusal rule in 1950, well after Pickford won her Best Actress award--the first ever given for a performance in a so-called talkie. Regardless of when she first received that Oscar, the Academy contends Pickford signed away her rights to sell it when she won an honorary Oscar in 1975. Passin says Pickford never signed any such agreement and has hired a handwriting expert who has filed a declaration with the court backing the heirs' claim. Quinn Emanuel disagrees, though Academy lawyers concede that an assistant may have signed on behalf of Pickford, who was in her mid-80s at the time. Either way, the agreement should hold up, Tayback argues.

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