FRANCES MCDORMAND Briefly Gets OSCAR Award STOLEN, But Later Returned

Many celebrities have had great reason to celebrate in the aftermath of the 90th Academy Awards held Sunday this week. Among them is Frances McDormand, who had to honor of being named Best Actress for her leading role in the gripping drama film and Best Picture nominee “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”. But her moment of personal triumph almost turned sour during the Governor’s Ball following the awards ceremony. During the proceedings, McDormand’s Best Actress Oscar statuette disappeared from the venue. Following a manhunt by the authorities, the suspect was caught and the award immediately returned to the happy winner.

USA Today tells us that the LAPD needed only a scant few hours to track down and arrest 47-year-old Terry Bryant, the suspect who stole away Frances McDormand’s Academy Award during the Governor’s Ball following the Oscar Awards night on March 4. His guilt in a way was beyond any doubt, considering he had the audacity to post a video of himself on Facebook, with the Oscar statuette in hand to boot. Bryant buried himself deeper with his video statement: “My team got this tonight. This is mine. We got it tonight, baby,” Bryant crowed on-screen before kissing the award.

At the same time, Frances McDormand had been found emotionally affected at the Governor’s Ball, crying at the disappearance of her Oscar. Once a thorough search of the venue failed to turn up the missing award, the actress wrote off recovering the award from there and left the ball with her director husband Joel Coen. Venue security and the responding Los Angeles Police Department worked to recover the lost Oscar, helped by the fact that as it was for the Best Actress winner, it already had an engraving of McDormand’s name on it. Tracking down the suspect was remarkably easy.

Further details on The Verge have it that in addition to his Facebook update, Terry Brant was also caught on several cameras with the actress’ stolen Oscar. Cara Buckley from The New York Times had the pleasure of tweeting how the thief was ultimately caught. In the middle of his merry jaunt with the award, Brant was intercepted by a photographer of celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck. When the police arrived, the Best Actress Oscar was delivered post-haste to McDormand before Sunday turned to Monday. Brant himself now faces charges of grand theft and is in custody with a $20,000 bail.

Photo courtesy of springfieldnewssun.com