FIRST OFF . . .

The best picture Oscar for “An American in Paris,” given to producer Arthur Freed in 1951 and sold at auction for $15,760 last month, will be sent to Europe today despite protestations from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, auctioneer Malcolm Willits said Wednesday. Willits was asked to sell the Oscar which belonged to a collector in Maine who had acquired it from an estate. In addition, Willits, who owns the Collectors Book Store in Hollywood, told The Times he was also asked to conduct a private auction for Marlon Brando’s Oscar from “On the Waterfront,” which sold for $13,500. According to the collector: “I’m the first man ever to put a value on the Oscar.” Academy officials have taken a dim view of the whole affair--especially after Sean Connery mentioned the $15,000 price tag during his acceptance speech last week. Bruce Davis, the academy’s executive administrator, said the objections centered around the desire to “preserve the history and good taste of the Oscar. They shouldn’t be items of commerce, it’s less than dignified.” Willits estimated the cost of manufacturing an Oscar at “around $400.”

But there’s more to the story. Prior to the auction Willits received a letter from academy attorneys notifying him that the organization’s bylaws require Academy Award winners to sign a statement acknowledging that they are prohibited from selling their Oscar without first offering it to the academy for $1. “We don’t make them sign it backstage or anything,” said the academy’s Davis, adding that the form is usually presented when the gold statuettes are brought in to be engraved. Davis said it’s perfectly all right for winners to give them to family members, however. In Willits case, Davis said: “It’s only binding on the original owner, once it’s moved past that, there’s no way to make it legally binding.”