They Lost Their Oscars In The Wildfires. What Happens Next?

When past year’s wildfires forced Colleen Atwood to evacuate her location successful Pacific Palisades, nan Oscar-winning costume designer grabbed a fewer photographs, gathered her pets and left. She didn’t walk overmuch clip deciding what to take. She couldn’t ideate that her location connected Aderno Way, wherever she’d lived for much than 30 years, would burn.

“I had to do a runner,” Atwood jokes, describing her hurried exit connected a caller greeting telephone telephone from Australia, wherever she’s been moving connected Tom Hanks’ World War II play “Greyhound 2.” “I didn’t really judge it was real.”

What she didn’t drawback were her Academy Awards she had earned complete nan people of her career. One of nan 4 Oscars — her first, for nan 2002 philharmonic “Chicago” — was safely connected show astatine nan Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. But nan different three, for “Memoirs of a Geisha” (2005), “Alice successful Wonderland” (2010) and “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” (2016), had been sitting connected a bookshelf successful a activity area conscionable disconnected nan eating room.

When Atwood was yet allowed backmost onto nan property, almost thing remained. She and an adjunct picked done nan rubble, searching for thing that mightiness person survived nan devastating fires that destroyed much than 6,800 structures successful nan Palisades, Topanga and Malibu. Her 3 BAFTAs and 2 Emmys were gone, on pinch her Disney Legend award. Two of nan Oscars had melted entirely, but 1 of nan statuettes had endured — conscionable barely.

Colleen Atwood’s scorched Oscar soon aft it was recovered from nan rubble of her erstwhile Palisades home.

(Bryan Kopp)

The gold-plated fig she’d won for “Fantastic Beasts” was warped and blackened by heat, its aboveground blistered and twisted for illustration thing pulled from a furnace. Atwood gave nan damaged trophy a nickname: “my crispy critter.”

For astir a century, nan Oscar statuette has been Hollywood’s astir enduring awesome of success, a gold-plated knight gripping a crusader’s sword, designed to look arsenic imperishable arsenic nan grant it represents. But for illustration everything else, nan entity itself is not immune to catastrophe. Fires, thefts and nan occasional mishap person destroyed aliases scattered a mini number of nan statuettes handed retired each twelvemonth by nan Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

When that happens, nan mobility becomes: What, exactly, happens to an Oscar erstwhile it disappears aliases is damaged beyond recognition?

In nan days aft nan fires, a melodramatic image of a charred Oscar lying successful nan rubble circulated wide connected societal media, pinch immoderate posts claiming it showed Robert Redford’s statuette destroyed successful nan disaster. Isabella Rossellini shared it pinch her million-plus Instagram followers, calling it “heartbreaking.” The image turned retired to beryllium an AI-generated fake.

For Atwood, though, nan nonaccomplishment of her Oscars was each excessively existent — and she was not alone.

Production designer Rick Carter, a two-time Oscar winner known for his activity pinch board specified arsenic Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis and James Cameron, had been successful Paris erstwhile a friend called to pass him that nan blaze was moving toward his Palisades neighborhood. By nan clip he returned, his location and astir everything wrong it were gone, including nan Oscars he had won for 2009’s “Avatar” and 2012’s “Lincoln.”

“When we went back, we didn’t find immoderate trace of them,” Carter said by telephone earlier this period arsenic he prepared to committee a level astatine LAX for different travel to Paris, wherever he travels regularly. “Everything was destroyed. All my artwork was gone. There was nothing. It was truthful painful.”

Carter’s statuettes had been displayed connected a mantel. They represented nan 2 very different sides of his activity arsenic a accumulation designer: nan fantastical world-building of “Avatar” and nan grounded humanities realism of “Lincoln.”

“I person 2 kids — I person 2 arms, 2 eyes,” he says. “It conscionable fresh that someway I’d been fortunate capable to get these 2 Oscars.”

Like Atwood, Carter initially wasn’t judge what would hap next. The academy tightly controls nan statuettes. Each bears a unsocial serial number and since 1950, winners person been prohibited from trading them connected nan unfastened marketplace without first offering them backmost to nan statement for 1 dollar. Carter didn’t cognize whether nan mislaid trophies could beryllium re-created. “I thought, ‘Well, I wonderment if they really switch these things,’ ” he says.

Colleen Atwood accepting nan Oscar for costume creation for her activity connected “Memoirs of a Geisha” successful 2006.

(Mark J. Terrill / AP)

The academy seldom discusses publically what happens erstwhile 1 of its statuettes — much than 3,000 of them are now retired successful nan world — is mislaid aliases destroyed. When contacted for this story, nan statement said it would repair aliases switch Oscars belonging to surviving winners successful cases of terrible harm aliases catastrophic loss, though it declined to item really those requests are handled aliases really often they occur.

Even earlier past year’s wildfires, astatine slightest 1 erstwhile Oscar victor mislaid an Academy Award successful a blaze. In 1983, Gene Kelly’s Beverly Hills location was destroyed aft a Christmas character ignited successful nan mediate of nan night. Kelly escaped pinch insignificant burns aft his son, who was downstairs, rushed to thief rescue nan character from his bedroom, but nan occurrence consumed overmuch of nan actor’s memorabilia, including nan honorary Oscar he’d received successful 1952.

Despite their aura of permanence, Oscar statuettes person occasionally vanished complete nan years. Vivien Leigh’s Oscar for “A Streetcar Named Desire” was stolen during a break-in successful nan 1950s. Margaret O’Brien’s miniature “juvenile” Oscar for “Meet Me successful St. Louis” was taken by a housekeeper who offered to polish it but ne'er returned. Olympia Dukakis’ statuette for “Moonstruck” was stolen by a thief who brazenly tried to waste it backmost to her, while Whoopi Goldberg’s Oscar for “Ghost” concisely vanished aft she mailed it to nan academy to beryllium replated and polished, only for it to beryllium recovered days later, mysteriously, by a information defender who recovered it successful a trash bin astatine Ontario International Airport, 35 miles eastbound of L.A.

And Jared Leto erstwhile revealed that his 2014 Oscar for “Dallas Buyers Club” vanished during a move and remained missing for six years earlier resurfacing successful 2024 — a communicative that someway feels very Jared Leto.

While nan creation of nan Oscar has stayed mostly unchanged since nan award’s inception, nan materials utilized to make nan trophies person evolved complete time. The first statuettes, introduced astatine nan inaugural ceremonial successful 1929, were gold-plated coagulated bronze. Within a fewer years nan academy switched to a lighter tin-based alloy known arsenic Britannia metal, plated successful layers of copper, nickel metallic and gold. This alloy softens and deforms astatine comparatively debased temperatures — astir 500 F — good beneath nan strength of a emblematic location fire.

During World War II, erstwhile metallic was scarce, nan trophies were made of painted plaster for 3 years, pinch winners later invited to speech them for metallic versions.

In 2016, nan academy returned to bronze arsenic nan statuette’s halfway material. Today’s Oscars are formed successful molten bronze astatine a fine-art foundry successful upstate New York, polished to a reflector decorativeness and electroplated successful 24-karat gold, a process that takes respective months to nutrient each year’s batch. Bronze typically melts astatine temperatures approaching 1,800 F, somewhat supra nan scope reached successful aggravated building fires. The academy besides maintains a long-standing narration pinch its erstwhile manufacturer, Chicago-based R.S. Owens & Co., which services and restores older statuettes that person mislaid their luster.

“My astir caller Oscar was made by nan foundry they’re utilizing now,” Atwood says. “I deliberation that’s why it survived.”

In nan months aft nan L.A. fires, nan academy yet stepped in.

Carter, a five-time Oscar nominee, says nan statement contacted him not agelong aft his location burned and arranged to create replacement statuettes. A fewer months aft nan fires, he went to nan academy and received them from its main executive, Bill Kramer — a infinitesimal he hadn’t expected to find arsenic affectional arsenic he did. The replacement Oscars are now astatine a family compartment successful Carmel while he waits for his Palisades location to beryllium rebuilt.

“I didn’t rather admit until they were gone really overmuch I had weighted what they meant connected benignant of a talisman level,” Carter says. “When they were abruptly location again, I realized really overmuch that mattered. The older I get, nan much they mean. They’re imbued pinch what you put into them — immoderate imagination was attached to them that meant thing to you and different people. It’s intangible but, you know, it’s a golden statue and it’s heavy.”

Atwood besides received replacement Oscars aft sending nan academy a photograph of her scorched “crispy critter” and informing them that 2 others had been wholly lost. (She’s besides keeping nan original arsenic a memento of nan fires.) Atwood says nan acquisition made her recently alert of really overmuch nan awards still resonate beyond Hollywood.

“I realized really overmuch different group worth what nan Oscar is,” says nan 12-time Oscar nominee, presently staying pinch a friend successful Santa Monica. “People I cognize who aren’t successful nan manufacture kept asking, ‘Did you get your Oscars?’ As overmuch arsenic everyone says it’s difficult to support group watching nan Oscars, group each complete nan world still clasp what nan Oscar stands for.”

For now, Atwood’s replacement Oscars are safely stowed away.

“They’re locked up successful a retention unit,” she says pinch a laugh. “They’re having a nap correct now.”