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Auction of collection of TCM’s Robert Osborne includes Oscar

Catherine Saunders-Watson
Catherine Saunders-Watson
Oscar
1936 Oscar® statuette awarded to art director Richard Day for his work on the 1935 film The Dark Angel, starring Fredric March and Merle Oberon. Provenance: The Robert Osborne Collection, then by family descent. Estimate: $70,000-$100,000. Image courtesy of Grant Zahajko Auctions

DAVENPORT, Wash. (AP) – A 1936 Academy Award is among the items going up for auction next month from the collection of the late Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne.

Grant Zahajko Auctions of Davenport, Washington, announced Friday that Osborne’s vast movie memorabilia collection will be auctioned on Oct. 10. Absentee and Internet live bidding will be available through LiveAuctioneers.

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Motion picture historian and Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne (1932-2017). 2007 photo by David Shankbone, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

The collection of the TCM host and movie historian, who died in 2017, includes the 1936 Oscar statuette given to art director Richard Day for his work on the film “The Dark Angel,” which starred Fredric March and Merle Oberon. It’s expected to go for between $70,000 and $100,000.

The sale of Oscar statuettes is uncommon because winners since 1951 have had to agree that they or their heirs must offer it back to the movie academy for $1 before selling it elsewhere.

“There are rare instances when they can be made available in the marketplace, as is the case with the Oscar from Mr. Osborne’s archive,” Zahajko said in a statement. “It’s very exciting for collectors.”

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Two pages from Robert Osborne’s personal copy of the 1979 book he authored titled 50 Golden Years of Oscar®: The Official History of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Book contains 383 autographs of Oscar winners and nominees. Pages shown here were signed by stars of Gone With The Wind. Provenance: The Robert Osborne Collection, then by family descent. Estimate: $20,000-$30,000. Image courtesy of Grant Zahajko Auctions

The Osborne collection also includes a personal copy of “50 Golden Years of Oscar,” a 1979 book he wrote that was signed by 383 movie stars including Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Laurence Olivier and James Stewart. The book is expected to fetch between $20,000 and $30,000.

The auction will also include thousands of Osborne’s signed star-signed photos and letters, as well as posters from early Hollywood.

The collection belongs to three nieces, who wanted to sell it through an auction house based in his home state of Washington, where Osborne was born in the city of Colfax in 1932.

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A full preview will appear soon on Auction Central News.

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