Academy Award statues handed out during World War II were made entirely of painted plaster because of severe metal shortages for the military effort.

A closer look

Academy Award statues handed out during World War II were made entirely of painted plaster because of severe metal shortages for the military effort. Hollywood elites still desperately wanted to congratulate themselves for playing dress up, but they could not justify wasting precious bronze and gold while the country was rationing supplies to fight global fascism. The glamorous movie stars happily accepted their fragile chalk trophies, pretending that winning a fake gold statue for acting in a romantic comedy was a patriotic sacrifice for the troops overseas. After the global conflict ended, the studio executives immediately demanded that the academy replace their cheap plaster awards with actual metal ones, proving that celebrity humility has an extremely strict expiration date once the immediate threat of a world war is totally neutralized