Casablanca on NBC

Question: I know this is a really, really stupid question, but some friends and I were talking about the Olsen twins and (not that either of them is ever going to be nominated for an Academy Award — sorry Mary-Kate! Sorry Ashley!), but we were wondering: Have twins ever shared an Oscar?

Answer: I'd go so far as to say it's a very silly question but I'd stop short of "stupid," perhaps because I was actually curious enough to look into it. And the answer is that two twins have been Oscar winners, though the twins in question weren't actors: They're Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein, two of the three screenwriters who wrote Casablanca (1943). Oh, and they didn't have to share a single statuette — each got his own.

Question: I've heard that Oscar winners sometimes sell their statuettes and that there's supposedly something wrong with that. What's the story, and just for the record, what is an Oscar worth?

Answer: The only Oscar winner who actually sold his own statuette was Harold Russell, who traded his best-supporting-actor statuette from The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) for $50,000 in 1992. Russell, a nonactor, played a World War II veteran who comes home a double amputee, as Russell himself had done in real life. And he actually won two Oscars for the same performance, so even after selling his acting award, he had a special Oscar "bringing aid and comfort to disabled veterans" for his mantle.

But generally when an Oscar is up for sale, it's by heirs of the person who actually won the award, and the problem read more

Question: I know this is a really, really stupid question, but some friends and I were talking about the Olsen twins and (not that either of them is ever going to be nominated for an Academy Award — sorry Mary-Kate! Sorry Ashley!), but we were wondering: Have twins ever shared an Oscar?

Answer: I'd go so far as to say it's a very silly question but I'd stop short of stupid, perhaps because I was actually curious enough to look into it. And the answer is yes, though the twins in question aren't actors: They're Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein, two of the three screenwriters who wrote Casablanca (1943).