Being an Oscar winner is the ultimate in status, but the Oscar award is also physical thing in itself—one that that stands 13-and-a-half inches high, weighs eight-and-a-half pounds and presents a question to its owner. That question: what are you going to do with me?
The first and most obvious answer is to pose for pictures together. Every winner does that—though some hold the statuette professionally, while others cuddle with it as if it was a puppy. But what then? In these photos, Elizabeth Taylor takes hers to the party, Vivien Leigh places hers on the mantlepiece, Joan Fontaine sets hers up on a workdesk, and Jimmy Stewart totes his along to the family hardware store, where he casually sets it on a display case while he catches up with an old friend.
Even after the awards are handed out, the show goes on.
Vivien Leigh placed the Oscar she won for her role as Scarlett in Gone With The Wind on her mantlepiece at home, 1940.
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Luise Rainer, the first woman to win two Oscars, held her Best Actress award for her performance in The Great Ziegfeld during the 1937 Academy Awards ceremony.
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Joan Fontaine did the household bookkeeping next to the Oscar she won for her role in Hitchcok’s Suspicion, 1942.
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Elizabeth Taylor at a Hollywood party with the Oscar she won for her role in Butterfield, 1961.
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Grace Kelly with the Oscar she won for her role in The Country Girl, 1955. William Holden, her co-star in the movie, stood behind her.
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Audrey Hepburn with the Oscar she won for Roman Holiday, 1954.
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Joanne Woodward smiled radiantly while holding her Best Actress Oscar for her role in Three Faces of Eve, 1958.
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Best Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress winners Frank Sinatra and Donna Reed (both for From Here to Eternity) and their Oscars, 1954.
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Academy Awards: Classic Film Stars With Their Oscars
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Gloria Grahame with her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for The Bad and the Beautiful, 1953.
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Marlon Brando (right) with his Oscar for On the Waterfront, 1955.
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Onstage presenters seen from the wings during the 1950 Academy Awards.
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Jimmy Stewart, back from WWII, talked with the oldest employee of his family’s hardware store in Pennsylvania, George Little; nearby is a table of various mementos, including Stewart’s Best Actor Oscar for The Philadelphia Story.
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Joan Crawford with her Best Actress Oscar for Mildred Pierce, 1946.
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