Spielberg’s Present to Tinseltown: Gable’s Oscar

When an anonymous bidder coughed up $607,500 for Clark Gable’s gold-plated Oscar, film historians lamented that a Hollywood treasure would be lost forever, collecting dust over some millionaire’s fireplace.

But on Tuesday, the film buffs got a Tinseltown plot twist: the anonymous bidder at a Christie’s auction over the weekend turned out to be Steven Spielberg.

The renowned director--also fearing that a piece of Hollywood history could wind up in the wrong hands--donated the foot-tall award to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Academy executives could hardly believe their good fortune. After all, they had sought a court order just last week to keep the Oscar off the auction block.

Even by Hollywood’s brash big-money standards, they said, the gift seemed larger than life. It seemed, fittingly, Spielberg-esque.

“We are all just thunderstruck,” said Bruce Davis, the academy’s executive director, as he gripped the tarnished statuette in his office. “This is very unusual.”

Spielberg could not be reached for comment. A spokesman said the director was preparing to leave for the Hawaiian island of Kauai to finish shooting the sequel to his blockbuster film “Jurassic Park.”

A statement released by the academy said Spielberg bought the Oscar--which Gable won for his leading role as a wisecracking newspaper reporter in 1934’s best picture, “It Happened One Night”--to protect it from exploitation.

“I could think of no better sanctuary for Gable’s only Oscar than the Motion Picture Academy,” Spielberg said in the statement. “The Oscar statuette is the most personal recognition of good work our industry can ever bestow, and it strikes me as a sad sign of our times that this icon could be confused with a commercial treasure.”

Davis said the Gable statuette is important because it is one of a small and shrinking pool of vintage Oscars. Many of the awards handed out in the early years of the film business have been siphoned off to private collections or simply lost by families of the onetime stars.

Gable’s statuette, Davis said, is particularly significant because it belonged to a star whose very name has remained synonymous with Hollywood’s heyday.

Spielberg kept his gift a secret from virtually everyone. He didn’t even tell his mother. She learned about the donation when a Times reporter called her Pico Boulevard restaurant seeking a comment and could barely contain her glee, she was so proud of her son. “That rotten kid,” said Leah Adler. “I better call him.”

Spielberg bought the Oscar by phone on Sunday during Christie’s daylong auction of movie memorabilia at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood. Several of Gable’s personal effects were offered by his estate, including a set of golf clubs, a passport, a leather backgammon set and a collection of poker chips.

The Oscar’s $607,500 price tag--which included the $550,000 price of the item itself, plus commission and tax--set a Christie’s auction record. It surpassed the $563,500 a buyer spent three years ago to purchase an Oscar that Vivien Leigh won for her role in the 1939 best picture, “Gone With the Wind,” according to a Christie’s spokeswoman. Spielberg also spent $244,500 on a leather-bound copy of the script of the movie, which Gable once owned.

On Sunday night, a Spielberg associate contacted the academy to offer the Gable Oscar. Shortly after, Davis of the academy spoke to Spielberg by phone.

“He simply said that he felt that this tribute to one of the great figures in film history shouldn’t end up as a tchotchke in a theme restaurant,” Davis said. “We thought what he had done was terrific, and that we should give him credit. We sort of talked him into allowing us to mention who the buyer was.”

Excited academy executives announced the donation at a news conference Tuesday morning in front of their Wilshire Boulevard headquarters in Beverly Hills.

“The man has a hell of a way with a holiday gift,” said academy President Arthur Hiller.

The Gable Oscar is showing the signs of age: Most of the gold that once covered the eight-pound award has worn off, showing the bronze statuette beneath. The marble base is chipped.

The academy sought a temporary restraining order to keep the Oscar from being auctioned but a judge ruled last Friday that the academy did not give proper notice of the hearing to Christie’s and did not notify Gable’s son, John. The academy said Gable signed an agreement in 1957 giving it first right to buy the statuette if it was ever sold.

Gable’s Oscar is being stored in a vault at the academy headquarters. In a few months, it will be placed on permanent exhibit at the academy’s Center for Motion Picture Study on La Cienega Boulevard.