Oscar Seat Sellers Warned to Stop : Scalping: Agencies want to peddle seats, but academy issues warning to its members.

Jerry Adelman can’t understand why organizers of the Academy Awards are upset with him just because he wants to sell tickets to this year’s glamorous Oscar telecast at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

“It’s fun to go sit next to Jack Nicholson and the other stars,” said Adelman, president of Murray’s Tickets, a commercial ticket broker in Los Angeles. But the prospect of anyone with enough money buying a ticket to the Oscars ceremony March 30 has the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences so concerned that it is urging all academy members not to sell their tickets to Murray’s or another broker, Good Time Tickets.

“The academy has retained the view that this is a private event,” said Bruce Davis, executive director of the academy. “We never put tickets on public sale, even though we allow the whole world to watch over our shoulders while we present the awards.”

Davis said that in an age when celebrities are stalked by crazed fans and the world is troubled by terrorism, it is unnerving to think that anyone can buy a ticket to the Oscars.

Attorney David W. Quinto, who represents the academy, said security concerns were raised last year during the Gulf War. He said 500 people provided security at the Shrine Auditorium, including three helicopters that circled overhead and bomb-sniffing dogs.

“There was concern, because this is the most widely televised event in the world, that somebody might want to use it as a forum,” Quinto said. “For somebody who wanted to use the occasion to grab a few seconds of international spotlight, this would be a good way to do it.”

This year, the Oscars will be held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, which seats 2,800 for the ceremony; the Shrine seats 6,000. The academy gives two complimentary tickets each to nominees and presenters but most of the academy members buy them at a face value of $50 to $200. The tickets are stamped “non-transferrable.”

Adelman, however, said he can get up to $2,500 for a ticket depending on how badly someone wants to go. “We’ve had limos waiting outside,” he recalled. “There is a snob appeal (in going to the Oscars). People here really like that stuff.”

Lawrence Segal, an attorney for the ticket brokers, said that when the academy hands out the pairs of tickets, it has no guarantee who that extra person coming will be. “It could be a wife, or someone you met in a bar the night before.”

So upset is the academy that it has warned its members that if they are caught selling their tickets they will not be invited back.

“We know exactly who is supposed to be in each seat,” Davis said. “We know of about 100 tickets that seemed to have passed out of the hands of rightful owners into somebody else’s hands last year.”

He noted that one nominee last year in the sound category didn’t show up but apparently sold his tickets. In addition, Davis said, the academy found that some people in the media--”They tend to be editors, publishers, people of that level”--had also sold their tickets.

The academy currently is waging a battle in Los Angeles County Superior Court to stop Murray’s and Good Time from selling unwanted Academy Awards tickets.

Last week, a Superior Court judge dealt the academy a setback when he refused to issue a preliminary injunction that would have barred the brokers from selling tickets to this year’s presentation. The issue is still to be resolved at a later trial. Four other ticket brokers who were sued by the academy have signed stipulations that they will not sell the tickets, and other brokers throughout Southern California were warned to cease and desist.