On March 27, 1973, Marlon Brando rejected the Oscar for Best Actor for ‘The Godfather’ as a protest against the treatment of Native Americans. What no one knew then is that the statuette would not disappear, but would tour through some very famous hands in Hollywood, among others Roger Moore and Charlie Chaplin. This is the story of a prize that never existed and, even so, was doubled
The rejection. On March 27, 1973, before an audience of 85 million viewers, Sacheen Littlefeather took the stage at the 45th Oscar ceremony and rejected the Best Actor award for ‘The Godfather’ on behalf of Marlon Brando. The gesture was historic: it was the first live political speech at the gala, although not the first time that someone rejected the statuette (Brando was preceded by screenwriter Dudley Nichols in 1936 – out of solidarity with the Writers Guild – and actor George C. Scott in 1971 – who called the ceremony “a two-hour meat parade” -). But what happened to the statuette after that night was a mystery that lasted decades.
What no one saw. Sacheen Littlefeather never touched the statuette. Roger Moore (a few months away from debuting as James Bond, but already famous for his television role as The Saint) supported her throughout the speech. When Littlefeather left the stage, Moore followed her with the trophy in her hand and verified that no one had devised any protocol for collecting a rejected Oscar. So he took it with him.
The 1616. As reconstructed by Bruce Davis, former executive director of the Academy, the statuette (serial number 1616, not 1601 as was believed for years, a failure whose explanation we will now see and which still contaminates multiple chronicles of the journey of this award) accompanied Moore to several parties after the gala. In this way, he presided over tables full of food and drink and received “almost Bondian attention from a good number of women” before stopping for two weeks at the mansion of producer Albert Broccoli. Eventually, Moore’s publicist, Jerry Pam, returned her to the Academy.
Jump to 1995. The story seemed closed until, in 1995, the actor turned agent Marty Ingels called a press conference with an explosive statement: a client of his owned the Oscar rejected by Brando and was willing to auction it to benefit a charitable cause. The Academy responded bluntly: that Oscar did not exist. And technically, the Academy was right. Or not at all.
Of the 1601. Ingels revealed the trophy’s serial number: 1601. Academy records indicated that number corresponded to a statuette on loan at an exhibition in New York, and a phone call confirmed that it was still there. But then Ingels sent a photograph of the trophy in his possession and indeed, it could be seen that the engraved number was 1601: there were two statuettes with the same number. Something that had never happened since the Academy began recording serials on the trophies in 1950.
The explanation for the mess appeared in a record book prior to the computerization of the archives. Above the entry indicating the loan of the 1601 statuette was another line erased with white concealer. Viewed against the light, the page revealed the original text: “1601 — missing during the 45th Oscar ceremony.” The most likely hypothesis, according to Davis, is that the person responsible for the inventory of figurines that night had a duplicate made of the number 1601 and quietly returned it to the archives. But… why? What else happened in that ceremony that led to a duplicate being made?
First robbery. The 1601 that Ingels had was not Brando’s Oscar. It was the duplicate of another trophy stolen that same night: video images of the ceremony show that one of the statuettes for the best documentary award, ‘Marjoe’, was left forgotten on the podium when the lights went out for an advertising break. It is, according to Academy records, the only theft of an Oscar directly from the stage in its entire history.
Now, Chaplin. While the riddle of the 1601 was being solved, the fate of Brando’s authentic Oscar (the 1616 returned by Moore) took another turn. Charlie Chaplin had won his first Oscar that same year for the soundtrack of ‘Footlights’, a 1952 film that, due to a regulatory loophole already resolved the following year, was eligible twenty years after it was filmed. The Chaplin figurine was mailed to Europe and arrived damaged. Chaplin’s family returned it to the Academy asking for a replacement, and the Academy engraved Chaplin’s name on Brando’s Oscar and sent it to London.
Fifty years later. In August 2022, Academy President David Rubin issued a formal apology to Littlefeather in which he called the treatment received for his statements on Brando’s behalf (boos and stamping from the Academy’s leading men) “disproportionate and unjustified” and acknowledged that the damage to his career was “irreparable.” Littlefeather replied wryly: “It’s only been 50 years. We have to keep our sense of humor; it’s our method of survival.” He died on October 2 of that same year, a few weeks after the tribute ceremony that the Academy held in his honor. The trophy marked 1601(A), the duplicate manufactured to cover the theft, never appeared in public again.
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