The Gone With the Wind Best Picture Oscar has mysteriously vanished from Michael Jackson's estate

(Image credit: Tim Whitby/Getty Images)

published 24 February 2016

Michael Jackson owned a lot of weird stuff, but among his more valuable treasures was the best picture Oscar for 1939's Gone With the Wind, originally given to producer David O. Selznick. However, Jackson's estate now admits they can't find the Oscar anywhere.

Jackson, a movie buff, had bought the statuette in 1999 for $1.54 million — the most ever spent on an Oscar (the Academy has since imposed rules against selling Oscars, but those didn't exist when Gone With the Wind won back in 1940). However, at some point in the confusion that followed Jackson's unexpected death in 2009, the Gone With the Wind Oscar went missing, The Hollywood Reporter writes.

Jackson's estate told THR that they had assumed the valuable statue was kept at Jackson's Neverland estate, or in the Los Angeles home where he was living before he died. However, Jackson's attorney Howard Weitzman confessed, "The estate does not know where the Gone With the Wind statuette is." A family member may have taken it, it could have been misplaced in a storage facility along with some of Jackson's other possessions, or it could have been stolen.

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Jeva Lange was the executive editor at TheWeek.com. She formerly served as The Week's deputy editor and culture critic. She is also a contributor to Screen Slate, and her writing has appeared in The New York Daily News, The Awl, Vice, and Gothamist, among other publications. Jeva lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter.

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