Joan Crawford's Oscar sold at auction Tuesday for $426,732, Nate D. Sanders Auctions said.
It was Crawford's only statue in three nominations and the legendary star won it for her iconic performance as an ambitious restaurateur struggling to raise an ungrateful daughter in "Mildred Pierce" (1945).
The film marked a career comeback for Crawford, who was reeling from a string of bombs that had earned her the dreaded sobriquet, "box office poison." However, Crawford did not believe she would win the Oscar, thinking instead that the award was Ingrid Bergman's to lose for her performance as a singing nun in "The Bells of St. Mary's."
Not wishing to be embarrassed, legend has it that Crawford feigned illness and skipped the broadcast. When news reached her of her victory, she invited reporters into her home where she was photographed accepting the golden guy in bed.
"Whether the Academy voters were giving the Oscar to me, sentimentally, for Mildred or for 200 years of effort, the hell with it — I deserved it," Crawford said.
