Auctioneer Willits Takes 1939 Oscar Off the Block

Hollywood memorabilia auctioneer Malcolm Willits unexpectedly withdrew a 1939 Oscar from sale Tuesday night, even as phone-in bids for the statuette approached the $13,000 figure.

Willits, who has been at the center of a growing and controversial trade in the Academy Award statuettes, pulled the mint-condition gold-plated figurine from the private auction and said he would return it to its unidentified seller.

The 1939 Oscar was awarded to the late composer Leo Shuken for best musical score for “Stagecoach.” Shuken shared the award with Richard Hageman, Frank Harling and John Leipold.

Since last March, Willits has sold or auctioned seven Oscars for a grand total of $92,990, for which Willits retains a 20% commission.

In response, the academy recently took legal action to block sales of Oscars. Two weeks ago, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge forbid Cyrus Todd from auctioning a best picture Oscar his grandfather, film producer Mike Todd, earned in 1956 for “Around the World in 80 Days.”

Fearing an academy storm over the sale of Shuken’s Oscar, Willits said he made an arrangement with the academy prior to Tuesday’s auction that he would wait 30 days before transferring ownership of the Oscar to the highest bidder, thus giving the academy time to investigate the enigmatic Oscar seller to determine whether it would be within its legal rights to take back the statue. The academy declined comment.

One problem that has arisen is nobody seems to be sure exactly who offered the shiny eight-and-a-half pound statuette up for sale.

Willits insisted Tuesday that the woman who brought in the “Stagecoach” Oscar is not related to Shuken, and that she received the statuette as a gift. This contradicted earlier statements Willits made that the Oscar was turned in by a Shuken family member.

An academy source, meanwhile, indicated that the owner of the statuette may be one of Shuken’s two wives.

“Fifty years ago, only the (major categories) received the figure of a man,” said Shuken’s first wife, Anne, from her home in Beverly Hills. “The others won plaques. Years later we were told we could go to the academy and get an Oscar, but we felt sentimental about it and kept the plaque instead.

“I have the original, the plaque. I keep it on the mantle. But there was no Oscar.”

Several family members contacted by the Times said Shuken divorced Anne and married a younger woman, Kathleen, to whom he was married when he died. One family member suggested the possibility that Shuken did indeed request a statuette from the academy, unbeknown to his first wife, and bequeathed it to Kathleen upon his death in 1976. Academy records confirm that on December 29, 1966, an Oscar was awarded to Shuken in exchange for a plaque that was never turned in.

Attempts to reach Kathleen Shuken for comment at her home in Los Angeles were unsuccessful.

“Under the circumstances, we’re just going to return the Oscar,” Willits said. “It’s difficult to auction something when you can’t grant the title to for 30 days.”

“I would have to consider that a victory of a sort,” said Bill Kaiser, a former hospital administrator from New York who spent $21,250 last month to purchase one of five Oscars that 84-year-old art director Lyle Wheeler lost when they were accidentally auctioned off in a storage auction. Kaiser returned the Oscar to Wheeler last month.

Willits said he still plans to auction the four remaining Wheeler Oscars, now in the possession of a Long Beach couple. The academy cannot legally interfere with those sales because the statuettes are out of the hands of the original recipient or heir.

In a press conference Wednesday at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, Kaiser implored the couple to restore the Oscars to Wheeler. He said one of his primary goals in returning Wheeler’s Oscar was to kill the market for the resale of future Oscars.

Seemingly undaunted, Willits reports that he currently has a waiting list of clients who want to buy Oscars. Willits said he was approached by an individual this week who wants to auction a 1927 statuette, the first year of the Academy Awards, and is also in possession of a roughly-cast Oscar that never finished the manufacturing process. The Wheeler Oscar for “Anna and the King of Siam” (1946) is scheduled for auction on May 7.