The four Primetime Emmy Awards won by the late actress Valerie Harper will not be sold to the highest bidder — at least not on Friday morning, as had been scheduled to occur.
On Thursday, the United States District Court serving the Central District of California granted a temporary restraining order, requested by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, blocking Julien’s Auction LLC from selling the statuettes, which Harper, who died on Aug. 30, 2019, won for The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1971-1973) and for Rhoda (1975).
Online bidding had already begun, with projected sales prices of $6,000 to $8,000 for each statuette.
The TV Academy, which filed its complaint on Tuesday, argued that the sale of an Emmy has been forbidden “since at least as early as the 1971 Primetime Emmy Awards,” even if notices explicitly stating this policy only began to be “affixed to each Emmy statuette awarded at the Primetime Emmy Awards” in 1978.
John Leverence, the TV Academy’s former SVP awards, declared in the petition that the auction of the Harper Statuettes would severely damage the TV Academy’s integrity and reputation, since its “economic existence depends on the exclusivity and achievement symbolized by possession of an Emmy statuette,” and therefore [t]he sale of genuine Emmy statuettes to the highest bidder destroys the exclusivity and value of the Emmy statuettes, and, in turn, diminishes the significance of the statuettes and the Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony,” and also “conveys to the public that the Emmy statuettes can be bought and paid for, and that they symbolize wealth rather than artistic achievement.”
Julien’s countered with a declaration from the actress Margaret O’Brien, who worked “extensively in television during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s,” stating that it “was [her] understanding, and the understanding of [her] peers, colleagues and friends in the television industry that [she] spoke with during those decades, that Emmy awards were given to their recipients to do with as they pleased.”
(Excerpt) Read more in: The Hollywood Reporter