by RayKelly » Wed Jun 17, 2009 8:00 pm
For those new to the Dax Foundation/ Orson Welles connection, this 2008 bit from the Guardian News & Media about Welles' Oscar being placed on the auction block by Dax:
""We've had a tremendous amount of interest from very high-profile individuals who have said that they would like to see this on their mantel or back in the Academy's hands," Dave Weisman, executive director of the Dax Foundation, which owns the statuette, said.
After (Welles') death in 1985, his daughter, Beatrice, obtained a replacement from the Academy. But in 1994 the original surfaced at an auction at Sotheby's, which is handling this week's sale. The statuette had been in the possession of Welles's cinematographer, Gary Graver, who said the director had given it to him as a gift.
Welles's daughter sued to stop the sale and gain ownership of the statuette, pledging that it would feature in a permanent memorial to her father. Instead she sold the statuette three years later, fending off a lawsuit from the Academy seeking to block the sale. The statuette was bought in 2003 by the Dax Foundation."