Ever wonder if the stars have a hand in Hollywood’s unsolved puzzles? Well, here’s one that had me scratching my head like Mercury was messing with my Wi-Fi. Olivia Rutigliano, obsessed since age 12, dove into the curious case of Alice Brady’s Oscar—an award wrapped in mystery more tangled than a Gemini’s weekend plans. As it turns out, what seemed like a heist was actually a mix-up involving Henry King, Alice’s director, and a disappearing trophy that vanished shortly after her death. Years later, Olivia, then juggling PhD life and detective dreams, uncovered the Oscar’s dark horse journey through a Dallas auction house—wrongly claimed as a mere replacement. Though the trail got cold at an anonymous buyer, her mission continues, fueled by relentless hope (and maybe a little cosmic intervention). For anyone chasing lost treasures or astrological clues, this is one for the stars… and the Oscars. LEARN MORE.

The story fascinated Olivia Rutigliano since she was 12, so, as a college student, she decided to crack the case.

While studying at the University of Pennsylvania, she was able to study cases of stolen Oscars thanks to a research grant. An email to the Academy revealed that Alice’s case had quietly been solved a decade prior.

The “mystery man” actually turned out to be Henry King, who directed Alice in In Old Chicago, the film she was being awarded for. Following the afterparties, Alice’s colleagues gave the Oscar to her, and she had to take it to the Academy to be engraved herself. 

However, Alice died the year after her Oscar win, and the award seemingly disappeared sometime after that.

Several years after her search began, Olivia, then a PhD student at Columbia, decided to find the missing Oscar. Eventually, she found out that a Dallas auction house had sold it, though they’d wrongly labeled it as a “replacement” of Alice’s original Oscar. However, Olivia was unable to get in touch with the anonymous buyer to tell them the truth.

In 2018, she told Mother Jones, “My plan is to keep talking about Alice Brady’s not-stolen Oscar and hope that the message gets to them.”