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The Making Of Oscar
By: Tama Swan, Associate Editor
Issue: 2010feb
How R.S. Owens produces Hollywood’s most coveted award.
What is gold, only 13-and-a-half inches tall and used to recognize the highest achievements in acting and filmmaking? It’s the Oscar of course, and each year dozens of the trophies originate in a factory on the northwest side of Chicago, Illinois, 2,025 miles away from the bejeweled starlets and dashing leading men who win them at Los Angeles’s Kodak Theater.
Supplier R.S. Owens & Co., Inc. (UPIC: RSOWENS) has quietly and securely manufactured the Oscar awards since 1982, ensuring each is one of a kind, without flaws and safely delivered to the West Coast. “There’s a level of trust that the Academy (Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) has with us. It’s the level of trust we want with every single one of our customers,” says Larry Maloney, vice president of sales for R.S. Owens.
R.S. Owens got the account back in the 1980s when Oscar’s supplier at the time was discontinuing manufacturing. The Academy inquired about possible replacements, and the company recommended R.S. Owens. (It didn't hurt that R.S. Owens was already manufacturing the Emmy awards.) The original steel tooling for the award changed hands and R.S. Owens was off and running, creating one of the most recognizable awards in the world.
The three-to-four-week process of hand making approximately 50 awards begins by heating Britannia, a pewter alloy, to 900 degrees. The molten metal is then ladled through the gate and into the steel tooling all at once. Since each Oscar weighs in at eight-and-a-half pounds, lifting and pouring the metal requires a lot of strength on the worker’s part.
Once the metal is in the mold, the worker rocks it back and forth to achieve an even coat. The metal is then allowed to harden; however, this takes almost no time at all. Then the tooling is opened along a side seam to reveal the statuette.
At this point the statuette is inspected for quality and uniformity. If an award doesn’t make the cut, it’s melted down. Maloney says tracking each award, even those rejected, is critical for security. “There is an internal procedure within several layers of management after each stage to make sure there are no additional Oscars running around,” he says.
Precautions like this are par for the course when it comes to the Oscars. After inspection, the statuettes are recounted and placed in a secure cabinet before being moved within the manufacturing area, as it’s imperative that no statuette falls into the wrong hands.
The next step in the lifecycle of an Oscar is deburring, in which the gate is sawed off and parting lines from the seams are sanded. From there the statuette moves to polishing. This is one of the most important steps, Maloney says, because it ensures the award will have a smooth finish once it’s plated with gold. “You could have a very small imperfection, maybe a little bump not visible to the naked eye in the polishing stage, that could show in plating. You can’t miss anything,” he says.
Polishing is performed on a high-speed cloth rotary wheel by expert craftsmen. This step also requires strength, in addition to a keen eye for detail. “It’s not as though you can put it into a computer,” says Maloney. “It takes skill and experience to evaluate each award during this and the other steps of the process.”
After polishing, the statuette is lowered into a chemical bath, which degreases it and prepares it for electroplating.
The electroplating process, Maloney says, is a bit like eighth grade science class. Every statuette is consecutively dipped in copper, nickel, silver and 24-karat gold. Each metal is made up of either positively or negatively charged ions, and it’s the fusion between opposing ions that allows each layer to adhere to and actually become part of the Oscar’s surface. In other words, this gold plating won’t peel like inexpensive jewelry.
The recipe of metals used to electroplate the Oscar isn’t incidental. Copper prevents corrosion; nickel improves the adhesive qualities of the award’s surface; silver prevents corrosion and adds shine; and the gold, well that’s what makes it all worthwhile.
After plating, each Oscar is sealed with a heavy coat of lacquer for protection and shine.
Next the Oscar is engraved with a serial number. This allows both R.S. Owens and the Academy to keep track of each award and prevents fraudulent Oscars from being passed off as real ones.
Then the award is attached to its base and readied for transport. But wait, the Oscars aren’t just picked up by FedEx and drop shipped to LA. Instead they’re taken to the airport and loaded onto a commercial flight, also known as “the Oscar flight,” all the while accompanied by an R.S. Owens representative. Oh yeah, the representative also gets to attend the awards ceremony.
After the Oscars are passed out at this year’s 82nd Annual Academy Awards on Sunday, March 7, 2010, the awards will be returned to the Academy so that nameplates can be affixed to each one. “Contrary to belief,” Maloney says, “we have no idea who the winners are each year.”
Star Treatment
Not only does R.S. Owens make Oscars, but it repairs and refurbishes them as well. “It takes an earthquake to break an Oscar,” says Noreen Prohaska, MAS, the R.S. Owens account executive responsible for the Oscars. During the nearly 20 years she’s handled the account, Prohaska has heard many tales of damage to and destruction of Oscars.
When the Northridge earthquake wracked Los Angeles in 1994, Geena Davis’s Oscar fell off of a mantle and was dented and bent. Prohaska says the famous redhead requested that her Oscar be left at an angle. “It is the only Oscar I know out there that is tilted,” Prohaska says.
Prohaska has helped repair Oscars that belonged to Gregory Peck, Frank Sinatra and Francis Ford Coppola. She also coordinated repairs to Shelly Winters’s Oscar when it needed refinishing (Winters just gave Prohaska a call) and a replacement for Gene Kelly’s when it was lost in a fire. "This is rare," Prohaska says, "the Academy doesn’t replace many Oscars."
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