8 Hollywood Stars Who Didn't Accept Their Oscars
7. Dudley Nichols Refused To Even Accept His Golden Statue In The Mail!
Screenwriter and director Dudley Nichols was the very first person ever to decline an Academy Award.
A contemporary of Katharine Hepburn's (he wrote the screenplays for Bringing Up Baby and Mary of Scotland), Nichols turned down his Best Screenplay award for 1935's The Informer, showing solidarity with the Screenwriters Guild (of which he was a founder) in a power struggle between the Hollywood guilds, studios and company unions (of which the Academy was one of the big cheeses), and boycotted the ceremony.
Persistent as they are, the Academy sent the golden statue to his house several times, only for it to be returned on every attempt.
Following the settlement of the dispute, however, once Nichols was president of the rechristened Writers Guild of America, he collected his Oscar at the 10th Academy Awards ceremony in 1938. This was recognised as more of an effort to seal the peace between the guild and studios as much as reneging on his original stand -- something that was recognised and applauded throughout the American movie business.