The three lost Oscars won by little-known Australian costume designer Orry-Kelly are heading to this country for the first time.
The man who grew up on the NSW south coast as plain Orry Kelly - the hyphen was a stylish touch when he moved to Los Angeles - was one of the great costume designers of Hollywood's golden years from the 1930s to the 1960s.
After his death in 1964, he was virtually forgotten.
But until Catherine Martin won her fourth Oscar for The Great Gatsby last year, he was Australia's most prolific Oscar winner with wins for An American in Paris, Les Girls and Some Like It Hot in the 1950s.
In a celebrated career, Orry-Kelly also created costumes for such classic movies as Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon and was nominated for a fourth Oscar for Gypsy.
But where his Oscar statuettes went after he died was a mystery until director Gillian Armstrong started making a documentary on his life.
During research for Women He's Undressed, it emerged they were stored in an unmarked box - along with costume sketches and signed photos with Hollywood stars - at the Warner Bros archive in Los Angeles.
He had no living relatives so his longtime friend Ann Warner wife of studio boss Jack Warner, had stored his personal effects.
With the documentary about to have its world premiere at the Sydney Film Festival before opening in cinemas, the lost Oscars are heading to Australia for an exhibition, Orry-Kelly: Dressing Hollywood, at Melbourne's Australian Centre for the Moving Image in August.
"It's wonderful," says Armstrong. "They haven't been on display anywhere."
The director of My Brilliant Career, Little Women and Oscar and Lucinda thinks they should be on permanent display somewhere to acknowledge Orry-Kelly's contribution as a pioneering Australian behind the scenes in Hollywood.
Also in the box and heading to Australia are some of Orry-Kelly's costume sketches and artworks he painted.
"We've produced some amazing talent in this country but he's definitely one that's been forgotten," Armstrong says.
The curator of the exhibition, Ulanda Blair, says it has taken more than a year of negotiation with the Warner family to bring the Oscars and other memorabilia to Australia.
The costumes on display will include the dresses worn by Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon's cross-dressing musicians in Some Like It Hot, Mitzi Gaynor in Les Girls, Natalie Wood in Gypsy and Bette Davis in The Bride Came C.O.D.
"It's pretty extraordinary that our biggest Oscar winner for more than 50 years is so little-known," Blair says. "Gillian's film will be very important in revealing the man and hopefully this exhibition will do likewise."
Read more about Orry-Kelly's remarkable life in "Stitches in Time", Good Weekend.
