Which actor modeled for the statuette? Who got an award made of wood? Whose Oscar went missing? Get 10 more Oscar facts!

Compiled by Robert Abele, Jeryl Brunner, Steve Daly, Mari Kasanuki, Mary Margaret, Alexandra McDaniel, Tim Purtell, and Emmet Sullivan

#1 The next time you catch Sam Peckinpah’s 1969 western The Wild Bunch, you’ll be looking at Oscar. Not that the film won any, but one of its actors, Emilio Fernández, was the original nude model for statuette designer Cedric Gibbons in 1928. Fernández was then a Mexican revolutionary living in exile in Los Angeles and taking bit parts in films, and he went on to write and direct movies in Mexico.

#2 Charlie McCarthy ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s honorary Oscar, awarded in 1938, was—winkingly—made of wood. The next year, Walt Disney received an honorary Oscar for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs that consisted of one full-size statuette and seven miniature ones.

#3 Several Oscars have gone missing over the years, including:

• Olympia Dukakis’s Moonstruck award was stolen from her home; the Academy replaced it.

• Whoopi Goldberg’s Oscar for Ghost was lost when it was sent out to be cleaned; it was found in an airport trash can in Ontario, Calif.

• William Hurt’s award for Kiss of the Spider Woman went missing during a move in 2005. Police found the damaged statuette in a ditch by the side of the road.

• Bing Crosby’s Going My Way Oscar was on display at Gonzaga University, Crosby’s alma mater, in 1972 when a student replaced it with a Mickey Mouse figurine as a joke; a priest found it three days later in the university chapel.

• Margaret O’Brien’s mini Oscar for Outstanding Child Actress disappeared in 1954 and was returned to the actress in 1995 after someone discovered it at a Pasadena swap meet.

#4 During WWII, the Academy acknowledged the war effort and shortage of materials by fabricating the Oscars in plaster. They were later exchanged for the real thing.

#5 Your very own Oscar … for a very steep price: Last year, Orson Welles’s Best Screenplay award for 1941’s Citizen Kane went for $861,542. In 1999, Michael Jackson paid a record $1.54 million for David O. Selznick’s Best Picture statuette for Gone with the Wind.

#6 There have been only two acting ties in Oscar history: In 1932 Wallace Berry (The Champ) and Fredric March (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) both won Best Actor awards, and in 1969 Katharine Hepburn (The Lion in Winter) and Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl) split the votes for Best Actress.

#7 Three Oscar winners have refused their award: Dudley Nichols, 1935, screenwriter of The Informant (because of a labor crisis between the Academy and the guilds), in 1935; George C. Scott, Best Actor for Patton (he hated the competitive nature of the Oscars and famously called them a “meat parade”), in 1971; and Marlon Brando, Best Actor for The Godfather (protesting the industry’s treatment of Native Americans), in 1973. After Brando sent activist Sacheen Littlefeather to read his refusal statement at the podium, the Academy instituted a no-proxy rule for absent winners.

#8 When a star leaves his or her seat to present or receive awards, get ready for a production number, or use the rest room, one of an army of approximately 125 seat fillers goes into action. Lest you think this is the ultimate volunteer gig, they are explicitly told not to initiate conversations with celebrities or ask for autographs.



#9 The Oscar ceremony has never been canceled, but it was delayed three times: in 1938 (one week, due to flooding), 1968 (two days, because of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination), and 1981 (24 hours, due to the assassination attempt on President Reagan).

#10 Over the past 12 years, eight recipients of Best Actress and six of Best Actor won for roles based on real people. Might this bode well for Meryl Streep (as Margaret Thatcher), Michelle Williams (as Marilyn Monroe), and/or Brad Pitt (as Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane)?