Few Hollywood myths have been so tenacious—or so false—as the legend of actress Alice Brady’s “stolen” Academy Award. Recounted breathlessly each Oscar season for decades now, the story routinely pops up in trivia volumes and online listicles and catalogs of “stuff you didn’t know” about film history. It plays wonderfully. Intrigue! A stolen Oscar! A glamorous star robbed of her trophy! But like so many Hollywood stories, it’s irresistible because it isn’t true.
By Allan R. Ellenberger
The story goes back to the 1937 Academy Awards, which took place in March of 1938. Alice Brady won Best Supporting Actress that night for her role in In Old Chicago. Rumor has it that Brady was stuck in bed with a broken ankle and couldn't make it to the awards show. When they announced her as the winner, some guy she never saw before allegedly walked out onstage, accepted the award for her, and vanished into the night... with Oscar. Days later, she supposedly called the Academy to find out how she could access her award after hearing that she won. After some conversation, the Academy realized she never received the award because it had been stolen right from under them that evening. The mystery man was never found. Neither was the Oscar.
It's a great story. It's also not true. For years, the possibility lingered that Alice Brady’s Academy Award had truly vanished. If someone had bought it these past few decades - especially now - word would have spread through the tight-knit Hollywood memorabilia community. Collectors, dealers and veterans of the biz were consulted. One was the late Mr. Willits, founder of Hollywood's Collectors Bookstore. He had been involved with the hobby since the mid-'60s. He was familiar with the legend.
But Mr. Willits never heard any rumors of the Brady Oscar turning up. Neither had anyone else contacted. The theory boiled down to one of two possibilities: the award had been quietly sold many years ago, beyond the reach of modern collectors, or it had never been sold at all.
Then came the detail that refused to conform to the legend. In 2008, Heritage Auctions sold a Best Supporting Actress award from the 1937 ceremony—then still in plaque form—with Alice Brady’s name engraved upon it. The auction description identified it as a replacement award, allegedly issued by the Academy after the original Oscar was stolen. Included with the lot was a contemporary newspaper clipping showing Brady receiving the plaque at her home. This detail directly contradicted another long-repeated claim embedded in the myth: that Brady, who died in 1939, had passed away before ever seeing the substitute award. The plaque, donated by the Alice Brady Estate Archive, sold for nearly sixty thousand dollars.
Something about that explanation never quite aligned with the historical record. Shortly after learning of the sale and examining images of both the award and the accompanying photograph, inquiries were made at the Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills. That inquiry led directly to Academy librarian Libby Wertin, the custodian of the Academy’s historical files. When asked about the Brady Oscar, Wertin responded without hesitation that she already knew what had happened to it.
A few years back, she and a co-worker were charged with determining how the Brady theft legend itself originated. Using contemporary newspaper reports and Academy records, they pieced together what happened on Oscar night and in its immediate aftermath. Alice Brady really was laid up with a broken ankle, as the legend accurately notes, and couldn't attend the ceremony. Someone else accepted the award for her. But that person, according to articles printed the day after the awards, was not a fraud or opportunist. He was Henry King, director of In Old Chicago.
The events that followed were not criminal, but festive. An article, published days later in detail how some of Brady's friends retrieved her Oscar from the ceremony and transported it to her home in Beverly Hills that night. Since the speeches lasted so long – until well after one-thirty a.m. – they did not arrive until about two in the morning. Brady, who was confined to bedrest, had been asleep, but was so touched by her friends' thoughtfulness that the get-together soon became a party. People jammed into her boudoir, dogs jumped onto the bed, champagne corks flew, supper was brought in, and a great log fire burned in the hearth as dawn came. Brady was quoted as saying she was moved beyond words and flabbergasted by the award.
As was common practice then, this newly minted Oscar, sent to winners blank, came with instructions that it be sent back to the Academy to be engraved. Winners would temporarily relinquish their Oscars for this purpose, a routine procedure that would later become a source of confusion.
Alice Brady admires plaque awarded her by the Academy while her frequent co-star Charles Winninger, who made the presentation, looks on.
Less than two weeks later, another article put the timeline beyond dispute. Brady had been given back the engraved award in an informal ceremony in her home by her friend and longtime co-star Charles Winninger while she was working on Goodbye Broadway. Twelve days after she won her Oscar, Alice Brady was reunited with it. Its absence was permitted, temporary and well documented. Nothing was stolen. Nothing disappeared. There were no substitutes.
Which means the plaque sold at auction in 2008—the one long described as a substitute—was in fact the original Academy Award all along. The photograph included with the lot did not depict Brady receiving a replacement plaque. It captured the moment her own engraved award was returned to her.
But how did the myth develop? The first published reference to repeat the story of the theft seems to have come in the late 1980s and gained currency in books and articles through the 1990s when demand for Hollywood curios spiked and primary sources were rarely consulted. Gradually the story took on a sheen of legend: a phony visiting the premiere, a missing Oscar, a superstar who never saw her award. It was a better story than reality—and so it stuck.
With the original reporting restored and the paper trail reassembled, the reality is unmistakable. Alice Brady’s Oscar was never stolen. There was no mysterious thief, no daring con, no lost Academy Award. What was lost instead was memory—an institutional memory of how things used to work at the Academy, how trophies were managed and regulated and how easily the mundane can be remembered as sinister.
Hollywood has never lacked for tall tales. But sometimes the most instructive stories are not those that get taller with the telling. Sometimes they implode once the truth finally gets a word in edgewise.
If you enjoyed this article, please take a moment to comment, rate, and share the story — and help set the record straight.
Alice Brady's actual Oscar plaque that sold at auction in 2008 for $60,000
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Comments
Never heard of this one before! Great stuff!
Thanks, Mike. I appreciate your response!