Michael Jackson’s $1.5m Oscar Is Missing

One of the most important and expensive pieces of movie memorabilia that once belonged to Michael Jackson has disappeared without a trace.

Lawyers are desperately trying to locate the Best Picture Oscar, awarded to ‘Gone With The Wind’ in 1939, after it mysteriously vanished from the singer’s estate at some point following his death.

The King of Pop, who died in 2009, bought the trophy for $1.54 million (£1.1 million) at a Sotheby’s auction in 1999 but the executors of his will have been unable to find it amongst his possessions.

The Hollywood Reporter says its presumed the ‘Bad’ singer kept the Oscar at his Neverland Ranch in California, or at the Los Angeles home he was living in when he died, but attempts to track it down have proved it futile.

“The estate does not know where the ‘Gone With the Wind’ statuette is,” Jackson attorney Howard Weitzman told THR. “We would like to have that Oscar because it belongs to Michael’s children. I’m hopeful it will turn up at some point.”

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The Best Picture Oscar was awarded to the film’s producer David O. Selznick in 1940 and it’s still the most expensive Oscar ever sold at auction.

The executors theorise that the statuette may still be unearthed in a storage facility amongst his other uncatalogued possessions, with another family member who’s yet to come forward, or that it may have been stolen during the chaotic time immediately after the star’s death.

Image credits: PA/Rex