Can’t sell that Oscar? Have we got a lease deal for you!

Academy Award lawyers have been successful at stopping public auctions and private sales of Oscar statuettes made after 1951 -- when winners began signing agreements acknowledging that the trophies belong to the academy -- but now they face a new legal challenge: leasing.

Striking what’s being viewed as an unprecedented deal, GoldenPalace.com has agreed to pay $30,000 to lease an Oscar for 999 years from the estate of Morris Stoloff, who won best musical score of 1960 for “Song Without End.”

The Canadian online casino (goldenpalace.com) plans to include it in an exhibition that will soon tour state fairs and colleges, along with other pop culture curiosities it has acquired, including William Shatner’s kidney stone and Britney Spears’ pregnancy test.

“We’ve been trying to buy an Oscar, but the academy’s legal agreement clearly states that most of them can’t be sold, so we had to think creatively,” said casino spokesman Drew Blake.

Bruce Davis, the academy’s executive director, said, “I think you can assume we’ll object to this use of the statuette.”

Actress Margaret O’Brien seriously considered a $100,000 offer to lease the honorary Oscar she was given as outstanding juvenile performer of 1944 for portraying Tootie in “Meet Me in St. Louis,” “but I don’t want to upset the academy,” she said. “It’s too close to the Oscar ceremony right now .... Maybe I’ll talk to them about it next year.”

The statuette was stolen by a housekeeper soon after it was awarded, but the academy gave her a replacement on the condition that she’d abide by modern rules governing statuette ownership if the original were found. It surfaced years ago at a Rose Bowl swap meet, where it was purchased and then put up for auction at Butterfield’s. Academy officials stopped the sale, retrieved it and presented it to O’Brien at a special ceremony.

Once or twice a year a pre-1951 statuette goes up for sale. The best picture Oscar for “How Green Was My Valley” sold at Christie’s in 2004 for $95,600. In 1999, Michael Jackson set the record for most money ever paid: $1.54 million for the best picture Oscar for “Gone With the Wind.”

O’Neil covers all the major awards shows in his GoldDerby blog at TheEnvelope.com