If You've Got It, Do You Flaunt It?

By CARRIE FISHER
Published: March 2, 2006 in New York Times

WINNING an Academy Award is obviously a high point for most people, but what happens next? What happens after this particular happily ever after? Once you're home from the afterparties and it's just you and your little golden man, staring each other down in the front hall on Monday morning, where's he going to go? The two of you will be living together for a long time, and — regardless of the fact that he's never going to smile, no matter where you put him — you need to come to some sort of arrangement.

Are you going to be one of those people who put their statuettes in some really obvious place, like on the living room mantle? Or perhaps you'll sheepishly tuck it away in some dusty corner of a library bookshelf. Or you could make light of it by displaying it in the "loo," say, as Emma Thompson says she does — though sadly even this can smack of a certain smug self-effacement.

What's the new award winner to do?

Not having faced this high-class problem myself, I called around to a few people who have, trying to glean the secret codes of Oscar placement in hope of offering some helpful hints to this year's winners. As it turns out, there are simply no hard and fast rules.

What you do with your Oscar, and where it goes in your house, seem to depend largely on where you are in your life. For someone who cares for little else besides career, for example, it's the ideal accessory, often treated with a respect verging on worship. When Frank Sinatra won for Best Supporting Actor in "From Here to Eternity" in 1954, he was, well, extremely focused on his work and his standing in Hollywood. The story I heard was that when he first received it, he was very protective of it. But years later, a friend of mine heard that he had become much more cavalier, to the point of occasionally using it as a doorstop.

For women, winning an Oscar can sometimes be more complicated. My friends and I used to make bets about how long a celebrity marriage would last after the woman had won an Oscar and the man hadn't. Regardless of how big the man's box office was, once the woman received the statuette, it seemed that the days of the marriage were numbered. For some men, at least, a woman flaunting an Oscar can feel like deliberate emasculation, and spell doom for the relationship.

Even men with no connection to the movie industry can make their wives think twice about showing off their statuettes. When Jane Fonda won her first Best Actress Oscar, for "Klute" in 1972, she was single, and happily displayed the statuette on a bookcase. But when she married Tom Hayden a year later, she told me, "I put it away; it felt too prideful." What decent radical, after all, would showcase a golden statuette at home while protesting the war on the street? It didn't fit the Jane Fonda of that era.

But I think this reticence says as much about the husband as it does the wife, or the times: In 1991, she married Ted Turner, who had a huge display case to house all of his awards. Jane promptly had one of her own made, and her Oscars remain there to this day.

Jennifer Jones, who won the award for Best Actress for "The Song of Bernadette" in 1944, may be the ultimate example of a woman for whom the Oscar was truly no big deal, in her life or her house. Her marriage to the actor Robert Walker was falling apart at the time — she filed for divorce the day after the awards ceremony — and she was deeply in love with David O. Selznick, the producer of "Bernadette," whom she would later marry.

In the midst of all this, "the Oscar was never really a focal point," said her son Robert Walker Jr., who was putting it mildly.

The night she won, she left the statuette on the back seat of the taxi that drove her home. It was returned to her, and spent several decades on a towel shelf in a bathroom (a fact she told no one, not even the nosiest of reporters). Then, a few years ago, she gave it to her hairdresser, Elle Elliott. (Jennifer is a very generous person; I imagine there are many people in her life that she would like to give Oscars to.) Ms. Elliott returned it days later, realizing that Jennifer's children would object to the transfer, and it now resides in a sitting room in the Malibu house that Jennifer shares with Robert, his wife Dawn and their children.

Jennifer, who turns 87 today, is selectively hazy about certain details of her past, but she has little difficulty remembering significant relationships or moments in her career, including "The Song of Bernadette." Her Oscar, though, is another matter: "Oh, there it is," she said on the phone, as someone in her house held up the statuette. "I must've won one then. I don't remember it, though."

While in Santa Fe last weekend, I called Shirley MacLaine and we spent a whole day together talking, but barely touched on the reason I had called, the whereabouts of her Oscar. (I did manage to find out that it's somewhere at her ranch, maybe in the library.) But this woman has so many other interests it would be hard to say where or if that Oscar fits into her life at all.

Elizabeth Taylor, on the other hand, has never forgotten her Oscars, although there are quite a lot of them to forget. All three are prominently displayed in her dining room along with her late husband Mike Todd's Oscar for "Around the World in 80 Days," a photograph of her investiture by the Queen as a dame of the Order of the British Empire, equivalent to knighthood, and a certificate commemorating the event. And, as far as I know, she has never for a moment felt the need to hide them. The first, for "Butterfield 8" in 1961, had no apparent effect on her marriage to my father, Eddie Fisher, which was doomed anyway (it lasted another three years). And I truly doubt whether her Oscars were a factor in the success and failure and success and failure of her marriages to Richard Burton — even the one she won for her role opposite him in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Richard was also nominated, but unfortunately did not win.

"Elizabeth was furious that Richard didn't win," said Mike Nichols, who directed the couple in "Woolf" and won the Oscar the next year for "The Graduate" (he keeps it in his office next to the fax machine). "It made her completely unable to enjoy winning herself."

Well, she may not have enjoyed the victory, but she seems to have grown comfortable with the Oscar over time. The awards shelf is clearly a center of power in her home. But knowing her as I do, it seems to me that the awards are like jewelry to her: treasures bestowed on her in return for the ardent pursuit of her passions. As her jewelry adorns her person and brings out her eyes, the Oscars adorn her home. They bring out her windows.

My pal Bruce Cohen, a producer, may have come up with my favorite answer to the problem of what to do with your Oscar. He keeps his, for Best Picture for "American Beauty," in his bedroom next to a fake Fabergé egg, a tiny glass vase with tiny fake roses and a miniature rhinestone-covered piano I bought for him from the Liberace Museum, topped with its own little candelabra.

It makes the Oscar look a little bit as though it too comes from the Liberace Museum, and a little bit Ken and Barbie. It puts me in mind of a great accessories idea, for those over-the-top gift bags they give out at the awards: For the Oscar winner who has everything, a little something for Oscar himself. A little Oscar mink for the Best Actress Oscar winner, a tiny Oscar necklace, on permanent loan from Neil Lane, and an Oscar limo, waiting for Oscar to finish his night of being photographed at all the best parties.

Bruce's little setup is certainly self-conscious, but it doesn't feel smugly self-effacing or obvious or like he's trying too hard. For those who don't want to forget their awards, but are afraid of seeming "prideful," his may be the best example to follow.