Looking for a picture of M. Herrick's Uncle Oscar (Oscar Award's namesake)

[bibliophage]

The oft-told tale of how the Oscar got its name is that an Academy employee, Margaret Herrick (later the executive director of the Academy), said that the statue looked like her uncle Oscar. This is the story C K Dexter Haven repeats in the Staff Report Why is the Oscar called the Oscar? The Academy itself doesn’t seem so sure that the story is true: Academy Award of Merit

Did Margaret Herrick really have an Uncle Oscar? Did the statue really look like him? I searched for one, but I couldn’t find a picture of her Uncle Oscar.

[samclem]

bib I’m sure, knowing you, that you have read about everything available on the subject(origin of term basically unknown, etc.).

If you didn’t stumble across it, I thought you might find this interesting

In a 1959 letter to a Merriam-Webster editor, Mrs. Herrick admitted:

Unfortunately, I must confess to having named the Oscar in 1931 in a thoughtless quip about an uncle of my mother’s whom I have never met. I have regretted it more times than I care to remember because the family seemed strangely devoid of humor in relation to the distant uncle, and I have always felt that the Academy loses something in dignity every time the statuette is referred to as Oscar.

from here
I know it answers nothing, but it was one of the few new twists to the story that I found.