Ducks and Geese in Movies - Fowl in Film

Ducks and Geese in Movies
Short List of Animals in Film, Feathered Characters

Already having covered some chicken in film, it seems only fair to look at ducks and geese who've appeared in films that we love. I'm going to look at bird scenes instead of reviewing or the films. While Donald Duck is included, these are live-action feature films. 

In 1986, Howard the Duck, a Marvel Comics comic book character starred in his own film alongside Lea Thompson, Jeffrey Jones and Tim Robbins. Howard isn't a toy figure or a real animal. It's a great costume, though.

1) Friendly Persuasion 1956
Gary Cooper, Dorothy McGuire, Anthony Perkins, Richard Eyer, Robert Middleton and Phyllis Love and Samantha the Goose.

The screenplay was adapted by Michael Wilson from the 1945 novel. The film was originally released with no screenwriting credit because Wilson was on the Hollywood blacklist. 

His credit was restored in 1996. (Screen World Annual 1997 has information on blacklisted screenwriters whose credits were restored. Please see below.)

Gary Cooper and Dorothy McGuire are Jess and Eliza Birdwell, a couple with a great family name to start off. Their sons are Josh (Perkins) and Little Jess (Eyer). Samantha the Goose is Eliza's pet. The family members are pacifists amidst the escalating war.

When the father is away Confederate raiders storm the farm. Eliza tells them there is food inside and tells them to take what they want. They tear the place apart taking their farm animals. But when one of the soldiers grabs Samantha, she has had more than enough. 

She goes after them with a broom, telling them that goose is a pet not meant for a meal! Happily, maybe amazingly, the soldier apologizes. He didn't know the bird was a pet. After they've left Eliza tells her children not to let Jess know what happened. Even though Samantha is safe, she isn't proud of what she did.

The squawking, Samantha saving broom whooping scene is one of the most memorable bits in this movie.


2) Journey to the Center of the Earth 1959
James Mason Arlene Dahl, Pat Boone, Diane Baker, Thayer David, Peter Ronson, Alan Napier and Gertrude the duck. From a Jules Verne story.

Gertrude the Duck 
Image from movie trailer

This movie is a Steampunk lover's delight, particularly the early parts with its design and its gadgets. The Lost City of Atlantis is only one of the thrills you'll encounter in this film. 

Gertrude is the pet and great pal of Hans Belker (Ronson) and she accompanies him on his adventures. She wears a sporty black ring around one eye, walks with a no-nonsense waddle and she's got a penchant for danger.

Gertrude the Duck was apparently not in the original novel and there are certainly other differences. As the group flees from giant boulders, falls into traps and such we might wonder if Gertrude isn't the smartest one in the bunch. She didn't go on this trip voluntarily. 

But Gertrude isn't so big after all and she's no match for the bad guy who has followed the team of explorers into the cavernous underground "grotesque petrified jungle, crude subterranean caverns never beheld by human eyes." In a 2008 remake, there's no duck. I don't think Gertrude was acting anymore.

Bachelor Mother Ginger Rogers
David Niven Donald Duck Disney Toys

3) Bachelor Mother 1939 (Donald Duck)
Ginger Rogers David Niven, Charles Coburn and Donald Duck toys 

Ginger Rogers' character gets laid off at Christmastime. She's worked at a department store toy department where we saw her at the counter with wind-up Donald Duck toys. 

Duck illustrations also figure into the opening credits of the movie.

Hard to believe how new the character of Donald Duck was in 1939. He'd just appeared in some RKO short features. He made his first appearance in 1934 and first film appearance in 1938.

Just a couple of years before 1937 Disney produced its first full length animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The scene where David Niven tries to return a broken headless duck to the store is pretty funny. The film was remade years later with Debbie Reynolds under the title Bundle of Joy.

Donald Duck has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame which he received August 9, 2004. He's one of very few animated characters with stars. This may have been a combination of product placement and featuring a hot current trend in your movie.


4) His Kind of Woman 1951
Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell, Vincent Price

Now from a famous but fictitious duck, we move to a, well.... When there's

His Kind Of Woman
Art Poster Print

nothing else to do, and you can't mumble... I usually paraphrase John Cleese in times like these.

This next duck is no more. It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! This is a late duck! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! It..... Vincent Price is going to cook this goose. 

At the very least, Vincent Price is going to manhandle and tickle this goose. Did he ever cook it?

Price, as Mark Cardigan, is getting ready to cook a bunch of what looks like small geese or ducks. He picks one up and, as a conversation goes on and on and on, his handling of that bird becomes as interesting as their discussion.  

The Most Mysterious handling of a raw duck in a film in 1951 award certainly goes to Vincent Price. That was something else. By all rights, Alfred Hitchcock would have been there to present the award.

Mr. Price was a gourmet chef in real real life and he was having some fun with his screen persona in this movie.

His Kind Of Woman Vincent Price, Master Chef

"The His Kind of Woman mutual admiration society also included the erudite and amusing Vincent Price thoroughly enjoying himself in a self-mocking performance as the film's vain, Shakespeare-spouting thespian. 
 
"'Jane as a lovely, funny girl with a great attitude,' said Price, 'and Bob was just hilarious.' Many a time Price a gourmet cook, hosted the other two for lunch, serving fabulous meals he had whipped together from scratch. 

"Some days they would all remain on the perfectly pleasant Morro's Lodge set during the noon break, spread a blanket on the faux sand beach and have a family picnic, Reva delivering baskets of chicken and potato salad, bottles of wine and beer. 'We had a lot of fun on that picture," Vincent Price recalled. 'At least in the beginning before it got so ... crazy.'" 
-- Robert Mitchum: "Baby I Don't Care" by Lee Server





"What would you think of roast goose stuffed with apples?"
Rudy from The Shop Around the Corner gets to have goose for Christmas in the James Stewart Margaret Sullavan film.

5) The Marx Brothers: Duck Soup, The Cocoanuts, You Bet Your Life

The phrase duck soup meant it was simple, easy peasy. In their first film The Cocoanuts 1929, Mr. Hammer (Groucho) has an exchange with Chico. He doesn't speak English very well. Here's a segment of the Viaduct/Why a Duck sketch from The Cocoanuts:

Hammer: Well, we'll Passover that...You're a peach, boy. Now, here is a little peninsula, and, eh, here is a viaduct leading over to the mainland.

Chico: Why a duck? 

Hammer: I'm alright, how are you? I say, here is a little peninsula, and here is a viaduct leading over to the mainland. 

Chico: Alright, why a duck? 

Hammer: I'm not playing "Ask Me Another," I say that's a viaduct. 

Chico: Alright! Why a duck? Why that...why a duck? Why a no chicken? 

Hammer: Well, I don't know why a no chicken; I'm a stranger here myself. All I know is that it's a viaduct. You try to cross over there a chicken and you'll find out why a duck.  

Harpo Marx communicated with a honk from an old automobile horn. Kind of goose-like now that you think about it.  Honk, Honk in his honor.

Why a Duck? is the name of one of the books about the Marx Brothers that I own. It's by Richard Anobile, with an introduction by Groucho Marx.

As Long As They're Laughing
Groucho Marx and You Bet Your Life

You Bet Your Life was a comedy quiz show hosted by Groucho that aired on radio and television. If contestants said the Secret Word of the night, Hooray for Captain Spaulding would play and a duck would drop from the ceiling. Much of the humor still holds up today.

Costume Designer Edith Head is on You Bet Your Life.





6) Theodore Case Sound Test: Gus Visser and his Singing Duck

This short film from 1925 is a part of the National Film Registry. You can see it on a recent post on this blog, Film Registry, linked below. What a talented duck! Theodore Case made several early sound recordings with other birds, a squirrel and even a ukulele, close to our hearts as my husband has apprentices learning to build them.

Interestingly Mr. Case also made a recording with the Vaudeville comedy team of and Gallagher and Shean in 1925. Al Shean was an uncle of the Marx Brothers.

 
7) Duck and Cover 1951

Duck and Cover was a 1951 educational film put out by the US Government.

This film had nothing to do with ducks or waterfowl of any kind. Duck used as a verb.

It was to educate people, children in particular, what to do in the case of a nuclear attack. 

The phrase was memorable and the film is historic. Created as part of the Civil Defense branch public awareness campaign, Stewart the spokesturtle. 



8) Mentions/Appearances in movies and TV: Duck, Duck, Duck.... A Honk and a Quack 

When Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant's characters are arrested in Bringing Up Baby, to get in good with the guards, Cary Grant puts the finger on, "Mickey the Mouse" & "Donald the Duck." These two Disney characters were very popular in 1938 when Bringing Up Baby came out. This film also featured a dog and a couple of leopards.

Scrooge / Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol: Get me the biggest goose in the window! Which is your favorite version of Dickens' Christmas Carol?

In 1916, there were at least two versions of the story produced. Paramount made A Christmas Carol.

Bluebird Studios made The Right to Be Happy featuring Rupert Julian, John Cook and Claire McDowell.

The Right to Be Happy 1916 Bluebird

If memory serves, someone actually says, "Lord love a duck!" in Foreign Correspondent.

Cary Grant Father Goose Original glossy Photo

 
The Magnificent Ambersons, a 1942 Orson Welles film, has talk of "The queer looking duck." Which is, I believe, right from the 1918 novel by Booth Tarkington which won the 1919 Pulitzer Prize.

Laura (1944) Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb): "I don't use a pen. I write with a goose quill dipped in venom." He's also seen sitting in a bathtub typing on his typewriter. Lydecker is referred to as an imperious, charismatic newspaper columnist an imperious, decadent dandy who became Laura's mentor. He provides the memorable first lines of the movie, "I shall never forget the weekend Laura died...."

Freaks: There is debate about the creature that Cleopatra becomes at the end. Is she part duck? How it happened is complete speculation. Costume originally created for Lon Chaney in director Tod Browning's West of Zanzibar (1928).

In Suspicion (1941), when Lina McLaidlaw Aysgarth (Joan Fontaine) is upset by her husband Johnnie's (Cary Grant) behavior, he and buddy Beaky (where did he get that bird-like nickname anyway?) (Nigel Bruce) try to cheer her up by making faces, tickling her and making sounds like a duck.

Question about The Birds:
Are any of those birds stuffed?
Alfred Hitchcock: 
"No. I'll tell you what we did. We rented 500 ducks and sprayed them gray. We started off with chickens but the neck movement gave them away.
-- From the book, Alfred Hitchcock: Interviews
 
In 1994's Four Weddings and a Funeral, Anna Chancellor's character Henrietta was called Duckface by the friends of her (former) boyfriend, Charles (Hugh Grant).

The Vicar of Dibley: In the Series 2 episode Celebrity Vicar, as part of a show to raise money for a new nursery school, Owen Newitt (Roger Lloyd-Pack) did a stage act with a performing duck.

While Cary Grant, Leslie Caron and Tevor Howard were in a film called Father Goose I don't recall there being a goose in it. If you saw one, let me know. 

What other prominent duck or goose actors
or other scene-stealers are missing? 

Majestic 3-Dimensional White Swan Costume Kids can climb into this majestic three-dimensional white Swan! Maybe it's Swan Lake, you want to let out your inner Bjork or it's holiday time for a Princess : 7th Day of Christmas?

Henry Fonda and Joan Bennett in Wild Geese Calling 24x36 Poster

The Bennett Sisters did their share of films with Goose, Geese in the title.

Constance Bennett appeared in two silent films in 1925:
The Goose Hangs High, a comedy other stars include Myrtle  Stedman, George Irving, Esther Ralston and Gertrude Claire.

She was in the well-known Goose Woman alongside Louise Dresser and Jack Pickford. There's  a scene where a feisty goose follows Dresser's character down the road to the scene of a murder.

As seen in the poster above, Joan Bennett was in Wild Geese Calling with Henry Fonda..


Geese vs Ducks, what's the difference?
Here are a few differences
Geese tend to be larger than ducks
Geese Honk
Ducks Quack






Final sequence from ... "Werner Herzog's classic film Stroszek (1977). The location for the closing sequence is in a strange fun-house where chickens dance, play the piano, a duck plays the drums and a rabbit is blowing the horn on a fire-engine!"
-- from description


Blacklisted Writers (re: Friendly Persuasion)

"Because of the blacklisting outrage brought on by the so-called McCarthy Era several screenwriters were denied final credit on films they worked on, starting in 1947 and continuing into the 1970s. 

"The Writers Guild of America recently voted to reinstate the correct writer credits on several motion pictures. The following are the corrected credits listed according to the corresponding volumes of Screen World in which they originally appeared..."
-- Screen World:1997 Film Annual: Volume 48 Expanded Format

Vincent Price standing in lake hair standing up
Very aquatic

Related Pages and Resources:

The National Film Registry : Incl. Gus Visser and His Singing Duck

The Top 5 Hitchcock Chicken Scenes

Animated Characters on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

Alfred Hitchcock: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers) by Sidney Gottlieb






There are some public domain images on this page

Jessica Tandy Claude Rains Hitchcock Ventriloquist Stories

Two Film Stars, Two Ventriloquists
with unconventional dummies
on Alfred Hitchcock Presents

Do you think Lydia Brenner (Mitch's mother in The Birds) and Alex Sebastian (a Nazi spy in Notorious) would be scared of some ventriloquists' dummies?

Fear is only one of the emotions dancing around the heads of the characters played by Jessica Tandy and Claude Rains in a couple of my favorite episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. 

Tandy played Lydia in The Birds and Rains was Alex Sebastian in Notorious.

This article will be riddled with spoilers since everything I'm talking about was aired or screened well over 50 years ago. If you don't want to be spoiled, please enjoy the movies and/or shows now. ...I'm happy to wait.
 

Claude Rains in Notorious
from Wikipedia Commons

 Do you remember the end of the film, Notorious?


    Devlin (Cary Grant): No room Sebastian.
    Alex: But you must take me. They're watching me.
    Devlin: That's your headache.
    [They drive off to the hospital]
    Nazi: There is no telephone in her room to call the hospital.
    Eric Mathis (Ivan Triesault): Alex, will you come in, please? I wish to talk to you.

These stars of Alfred Hitchcock films each appeared in more than one of the director's television shows, but I'm focusing on just two.

I read somewhere that an acceptable and modern form of ventriloquism is karaoke. What do you think of that?

And So Died Riabouchinska     Claude Rains February 12, 1956

Rains is ventriloquist John Fabian with a very lifelike female dummy. He is questioned about a murder that occurred at a vaudeville theater.

Then Fabian is questioned about a woman's disappearance years ago. Rains' performance is amazing and you'll be glad that you saw it. The video is below.

Turns out that the young woman from years ago looked remarkably like Riabouchinska, Fabian's dummy.

Detective Krovich can see that Fabian has something to hide, that he is fragile emotionally. Even though it's unorthodox, maybe Riabouchinska is the one to ask for the truth.

Also in the cast is a young Charles Bronson as the police detective who keeps on with the very unusual case until he solves it. 

With these shows, first you just have to watch to find out what happens. And then you have to watch again to get the nuances, find out more and to enjoy the performances. Those shows, movies or television that warrant rewatching are the very best.



The Claude Rains Hitchcock version may be unavailable for now on video. There was an Alan Bates version done for the Ray Bradbury Theater.


Claire Carleton is Fabian's wife, Alice. 

Virginia Gregg is the voice of the dummy, Riabouchinska. Though uncredited,  Gregg was one of the actors who provided the voice of Mrs. Bates in the original Psycho in 1960. Apparently Virginia Gregg was the voice of Mrs. Bates in the sequels of Psycho. She appeared as Emily in the famous Twilight Zone episode, The Masks, directed by Ida Lupino. 

Lupino, who had previously starred in The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine, is the only woman to have directed an episode of The Twilight Zone.

Jeanette Nolan and Paul Jasmin also provided voices for the mother in Psycho.

Since it's Oscar season, I'll add award information. Claude Rains was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor four times: for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Casablanca (1942), Mr. Skeffington (1944) and Notorious (1946).

Suspense Radio Drama - November 13, 1947 aired the Ray Bradbury story,  Riabouchinska. Listening to it is another experience.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents is available on DVD or to stream episode by episode. These are in Seasons One and Three if you'd like to own them and show them to friends. Some of Hitchcock's films are available to stream but not all yet.

Automatonophobia is the fear of ventriloquist's dummies. This can include the fear of wax figures, humanoid robots, mannequins, audio animatronics, life-like dolls or other figures designed to represent humans. Agalmatophilia is sort of the opposite, may be love of human-like figures. Think of the 2007 film, Lars and the Real Girl. I've got a post in the works on films with both of these features. There are some links below.

 
The Glass Eye   Jessica Tandy October 6, 1957

Jessica Tandy 8x10
Original Hollywood Prints

A young William Shatner tells the story in flashback. Jessica Tandy's character is his aunt, Julia Lester who's since died. He finds a glass eye and explains the story of how his sister came to have it. 

Shatner's character, Jim Whitely is cleaning out her home and speaking to his wife Rosemary Harris as Dorothy Whitely.

Patricia Hitchcock appears as a saleslady. Tom Conway is Max Collodi. Conway is the brother of actor George Sanders. The video is below.

Julia is an unmarried woman who lives a lonely, sad life. One day she sees the show of famous ventriloquist name Max Collodi. 

She's immediately enchanted and becomes something of an Edwardian ventriloquist's groupie. She quits her job, using her savings to follow him around. She keeps a scrapbook and writes him letters to say how much she admires him. 

Eventually, he writes her back and finally agrees to meet her in his hotel room. He instructs her to stay at a distance and for only a brief time. She approaches and tries to touch him but finds that the man she admired who she thought was the handsome Max Collodi is actually the dummy. The man who she thought was the dummy was actually controlling a larger sized doll. 
 

Jessica Tandy, Paul Playdon
Image from Wikipedia Commons

To Julia's horror, the Max Collodi figure keels over like a store mannequin as she tries to save him. A touch to his cheek and his head pops off in her hands. Which one is really Max? The smaller man is on a table stamping his feet and telling her to leave at once which she does. 

He removes the 'ventriloquist dummy' mask he usually wears in their act. Billy Barty plays the character in the mask, the one we thought was the dummy manipulated by the larger Max Collodi. 



In 1989 Jessica Tandy became the oldest actress to receive the Academy Award for Best Actress at age 80 for her role in Driving Miss Daisy. She was again nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1991 for Fried Green Tomatoes. She was married to actor Hume Cronyn for 52 years and their daughter Tandy Cronyn is also an actress.

At age 80, George Burns became the oldest acting and Best Supporting Actor awardee for The Sunshine Boys, a record which stood until Jessica Tandy won Best Actress in 1989. For males, Burns was succeeded by Christopher Plummer, who won Best Supporting Actor in 2012 for Beginners at the age of 82.
-- some info from Wikipedia

Carnival! Playbill Program April 13, 1961 Opening Night (Anna Maria Alberghetti)

 Speaking of puppets The Funeral March of a Marionette is the familiar theme song that Alfred Hitchcock used for his television shows. He said he heard it in the 1927 film, Sunrise a Song of Two Humans. Watch public broadcasting and old film channels such as TCM. You'll be able to catch this great film periodically on television and you may be able to get it at your local library.

Have you seen War Horse, the 2011 Steven Spielberg film set before and during World War I. The film features Jeremy Irvine, Emily Watson, David Thewlis and Niels Arestrup? It's an adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's 1982 children's novel of the same name. The Broadway play features a life-sized horse puppets. 

If you attend the King Kong musical stage play, in Australia for instance, you'll also see a massive six-metre animatronic silverback King Kong puppet. Much like the plays The Lion King and Avenue Q, they are incorporating more and more amazing puppetry props and entire characters into theater productions for adults and families.

At the Second Tony Awards in March 1948, Jessica Tandy won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play her performance as Blanche Dubois in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire. 

She shared the award with two other actresses, two other plays, Katharine Cornell (who won for the female lead in Antony and Cleopatra) and Judith Anderson (for her portrayal of Medea). 

Judith Anderson went on to film work including Laura, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Salome and of course, she played Mrs. Danvers in Hitchcock's film, Rebecca.
 

Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter, Marlon Brando, A Streetcar Named Desire
Broadway 1947

"Rosemary Harris and Jessica Tandy appeared together on television in 1957 in a classic episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents called The Glass Eye.... William Shatner plays Tandy's nephew and Harris his wife. This may be the only time the two Blanches - one former and one yet to come -- appeared together."
-- When Blanche Met Brando: The Scandalous Story of A Streetcar Named Desire by Sam Staggs

If you're looking for more coincidence, Billy Barty who was in The Glass Eye and Claire Carleton from And So Died Riabouchinska appeared in a 1958 episode of Shirley Temple's Storybook: Season 1, Episode 7, Rip Van Winkle. There were several famous storybook tales in this set. A variety of actors appeared and Shirley Temple narrated them.

In 1958 Robert Stevens, the director of The Glass Eye and another favorite Alfred Hitchcock Presents that features Jessica Tandy, Toby (as well as others) won an Emmy for Best Direction 'Half Hour or Less' for Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

January 25, 1949 the first Emmy Awards were held at the Hollywood Athletic Club. They were just to honor shows produced and aired locally in the Los Angeles area. The person who won the very first Emmy Award was ventriloquist Shirley Dinsdale & her puppet Judy. Not only a woman but a female puppet as well. Her award was for Most Outstanding Television Personality.

Ventriloquist Paul Winchell is on the panel of What's My Line July 22, 1956
Mystery guest Chicago ventriloquist figure maker Frank Marshall. 
He is the creator of Jerry Mahoney, Edgar Bergen's Charlie McCarthy and Jimmy Nelson's Danny O'Day.




Links to Pages of Interest:

Twilight Zone Dolls, Ventriloquist Dummies, Mystic Seers and Mannequins

Scary Doll iPhone, iPad and Tablet Cases

Memorable Dolls and Puppets of Science Fiction and Fantasy Film & TV

 
**About links: Please note that links will open in separate windows for your convenience. You can close them and go back to this blog article in its original window.  
Major updates to this page will be noted with a revision date.   

Travels of Orson Welles Academy Award

Orson Welles 8x10 Original Prints
Directing

Hide and Go Oscar
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences began handing out their Oscars in 1928. In 1942 Welles won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Citizen Kane, an award shared with co-writer, Herman J. Mankiewicz. 

• This page offers a timeline of the journey of Welles' Oscar, the most that we know
• Also there are a couple of videos including a Citizen Kane documentary that is very good

In 1950, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences passed a rule prohibiting Academy Award winners or their heirs from selling a statue without first offering it back to the Academy for a price of $1.

"Award winners shall not sell or otherwise dispose of the Oscar statuette, nor permit it to be sold or disposed of by operation of law, without first offering to sell it to the Academy for the sum of $1.00. This provision shall apply also to the heirs and assigns of Academy Award winners who may acquire a statuette by gift or bequest."
-- excerpted from the Academy Rules and Regulations

There are a lot of pre-1950 Oscars out there that have been sold and this includes Orson Welles' 1942 Academy Award.

The value of one of these awards has direct correlation to the film and personality connected with it. When you're talking about Orson Welles and Citizen Kane you're talking about legend.

The journey of Mr. Welles' Oscar, the statuette itself, has been interesting. The award weighs 7 pounds, 5 ounces and comes to a total height of 12" tall. Welles won the award when he was 25 years old.

In 1971, he received a second Honorary Oscar for his lifetime achievement.

At some point the actor/director said he'd lost the Citizen Kane Oscar.  This is what his family believed. "...For years it had gone missing and the Academy issued a replacement to Beatrice Welles, Orson's youngest daughter and sole heir." -- Nate D. Sanders Auctions

Citizen Kane, Orson Welles Oscar Movie Poster Display

In 1994 cinematographer, Gary Graver, tried to sell it. He claimed that Welles had given him the award as a gift. 

He talks about the experience in his book, Making Movies with Orson Welles.

"Completely out of the blue, Orson handed me the Oscar.
 
'Here,' he said. 'Keep this Gary. You take it. I want you to have it.'
I was of course absolutely stunned. This was the Oscar for Citizen Kane, the greatest film ever made! I told him I couldn't possibly take it but Orson wouldn't hear of it.

'No, no,' he said. 'I want you to have it.'

"And that was that. What a gift! Can you imagine? And I ultimately owned that statuette for about twenty years. Then in 1994 one of Orson's daughters learned that the Oscar was in my possession, so she filed a suit in California Supreme Court. 

"...The assertion her lawyers made was that the Oscar was not actually a gift but something Orson had handed me for safekeeping."

It was also said that the Oscar may have been give as a form of payment. It was displayed at the 75th Academy Awards in 2003.


 
Orson Welles was interviewed about Citizen Kane, William Randolph Hearst and more.

His daughter Beatrice sued and won custody of the statuette.  Then the Academy sued her when she tried to auction it in 2003. 

After a legal battle, she won the right to dispense of the Oscar and sold it to a nonprofit that tried unsuccessfully to sell it auction. She sold it to a California nonprofit called the Dax Foundation, who in turn tried unsuccessfully to auction it in 2007.

Sotheby’s also was unsuccessful when it tried to auction the award in 2007 but failed to as it failed to meet the reserve price.

Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth magic show entertaining the Troops

Peter Stackpole; Buy photo poster

Finally in December 2011 the Oscar Orson Welles won for the screenplay of Citizen Kane sold at auction for $861,542 to an undisclosed bidder, Nate D. Sanders Auctions reported.

Here is the description the Oscar had before it sold:

James Cameron
Holds Two Academy Awards
Oscars Titanic Original
35Mm Transparency

"Two engraved plaques are placed on opposite sides of the Belgian marble pedestal. One reads, 'Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences / First Award / 1941.' The other reads, 'Academy First Award To Orson Welles / For Writing / Original Screenplay of Citizen Kane.'

"The figure and film reel, composed of gold-plated britannium measuring 10.5" tall, top the pedestal, bringing the total height to 12". The pedestal's diameter measures 5.25". The award weighs 7 pounds, 5 ounces.

"Some tarnishing to statue, primarily to the leg area of the figure. The green felt backing under the pedestal is worn away around the edge. Overall in very good condition."
 
David Copperfield, who was outbid in the auction, said he admires Welles not only for his cinematic successes, but because he, too, was a magician. Welles hosted Copperfield's first television special.

Copperfield told the auction house that he wanted the Oscar because "Orson Welles was not only a magician of the cinema but also a performing magician himself." The magician also has history with Welles, The filmmaker hosted Copperfield's first TV special, and Copperfield already owns many props from Citizen Kane. (Hollywood Reporter)

Earlier in 2011, an Oscar won by by Nathan Levinson for best sound recording for the 1942 film Yankee Doodle Dandy was sold in Texas for $89,625. 

Le Voyage Dans La Lune Wrist Watches by moviebuffs
Shop for more Wristwatches at Zazzle

11th Annual Academy Awards, 1938
Spencer Tracy Boys Town with Bette Davies Jezebel
Buy photo poster print

The auction house said only a handful of Academy Awards have sold for nearly a million dollars. Michael Jackson famously paid $1.54 million in 1999 for the best picture Oscar awarded to David O. Selznick for Gone With The Wind.

Other awards can be found on auction regularly. Katharine Hepburn's Kennedy Center Honors ribbons and the BAFTA she earned for her performance in On Golden Pond were recently won at auction.

Among the awards available in a February 2014 auction at Nate B. Sanders Auctions is a Presidential Medal of Freedom With Distinction Awarded to Robert McNamara.






There are some fine documentaries about Citizen Kane.

There is some confusion about other nationally known industry awards such as the Emmy given by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. We've seen them block some sales of Emmys; Estelle Getty's Emmy Award was being sold on eBay in 2009. The sale of the Emmy was halted. But some Emmy sales have proceeded. 

Rita Hayworth has her hair dyed and cut 8x10" Photo

Related Pages of Interest:

Citizen Kane (Two-Disc Special Edition) See what all the fuss is about -- or enjoy it all over again. You can stream it onto your TV, computer, tablet, etc.

Orson Welles and the Oscars for Citizen Kane, Not so Terrific

Buying, Selling, Auctioning off Academy Awards  The Oscar Herman J. Mankiewicz won for co-writing Citizen Kane with Welles was auctioned off in 2012.

Collecting, Auctioning Entertainment Memorabilia

Nate B Sanders Auction House Orson Welles Oscar Consignment

Some information, not cited above from CNN, Reuters, CBS News, New York Daily News

Portraits Done in Unconventional Materials: Your Face Can Stand Out in the Crowd

Have you ever had your portrait done? Artists are creating portraits in materials other than or along with paint and any time I see artwork created in unconventional materials, I want to hear more. That's an artist to keep your eye on.  (Image at left from CadiGirlDesigns, Etsy)

This is another installment in my Anatomical Art series. If we must be specific, let's say it's about faces, 3-D portraits. These offer up interesting textures and often fascinating feats of construction as well as eliciting double-takes from the viewer. Some artists go for realism while others are more a caricature.

Lisa Kokin is an artist whose work I've been wanting to talk about for a while. I like buttons, partly for their diversity of material and form and partly for their history. Kokin is so creative using them in amazing portraits. (see image below, from her web site.)

"My work has always had an obsessive quality and this body of work is no exception. Every button is stitched to its neighbor to form a low-tech pixilated composition. 

"Up close each piece is an abstract melange of colors and shapes; the further back one stands the more decipherable the image becomes. This interplay between abstraction and representation intrigues me. 

"It is as though I am painting with buttons, building my palette as I go along, adding and subtracting until the interplay of colors and forms coalesces into a coherent image." -- from Lisa Kokin's web site

Among Sally Heller's artworks are portraits of pinup girls created with acrylic fingernails. I featured Heller in my post on fingernail art a while back.

Betty Milliken uses materials such as chewing gum, caulking compound and dried grapefruit peel in her portraits. There's an online tutorial, The Chewing Gum Portrait Project. You, too can be unconventional.

Jo Hamilton's crochet work includes portraits that she's made by turning photographs of people's faces into fiber. She also stitches colorful 3-D distorted cityscapes incorporating fibers of different types. (Jo Hamilton's work above)

Artist Michael Murphy mixes manure with paint for his portraits of some public figures including politicians.  Murphy's work appears to be bi-partisan.

In 2009, an exhibit called Faces: Chuck Close and Contemporary Portraiture as at the Nevada Museum of Art. 
Can a face tell a story?

On Etsy you'll find artists who make custom portraits in different materials.

At Papercutsbyjoe's shop there is an 8x10 Custom Paper Silhouette Portrait.

zJayne offers an ACEO Copper Collage custom made for you. (left)

A portrait/fiber art piece consisting velvet and decorator fabric on a burlap backing is at CadiGirlDesigns.

For those of you who are into cross stitch, visit Weesandy. You can get a custom Cross Stitch Pattern from something like a photo or your child's artwork.

Moonikins can create a 3-D portrait of your pet on a wooden magnet or keychain. A portion of sale is donated to AHS.

So don't keep your good-looking face in a jar by the door. Get an unconventional portrait made. Or try your hand at creating one yourself. I'll bet you've got some materials handy right now.


Like the other installments in the Anatomical Art series this portrait post just skims the surface and may well have a sequel in the future.

 

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