A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has tentatively ruled that a lawsuit filed to halt the sale of one of two Academy Award statuettes originally awarded to silent film star Mary Pickford should be tried in Riverside County, California, home of one of Pickford’s heirs.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences contends that it has the right, as per an Academy bylaw enacted in 1950, to buy back any Academy Award statuette for the nominal sum of $10.00 and has filed an injunction against the estate of Beverly Lorraine Rogers, the late second wife of Pickford’s husband Buddy Rogers, to prevent its three co-executors from selling the statuettes to anyone.
Kim Boyer, niece of Beverly Rogers and one of the three co-executors of the estate claims that the Oscar they wish to sell is the one Pickford received for her work on the 1930 film Coquette and is therefore not subject to the Academy’s restriction. The Academy claims that when Pickford was given a second, honorary, award in 1976, the agreement she signed that retroactively included her 1930 statuette.
Rogers, who passed away in 1999, was previously married to Pickford for 41 years until her death in 1979. Rogers received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy in 1986. Pickford won the Best Actress Oscar in 1930 for Coquette.
Previously- Academy Attempts To Block Sale Of Oscar
Via Hollywood Reporter
