MOVIES - Sept. 11, 1987

A plea for a 1930 vintage Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was answered by a screenwriter’s son who agreed to loan the gold statuette won by his late mother--and used by her as a doorstop--to complete a display at the academy’s Beverly Hills headquarters. Richard G. Thomson, the son of screenwriter Frances Marion, stepped forward this week to offer the statuette after learning of the plea from the academy. The Oscar-givers needed one of eight Oscars awarded during the 1929-30 ceremony to complete an exhibit consisting of one Oscar from each of the 59 annual Academy Award extravaganzas. Marion received the Oscar for the screenplay of MGM’s box-office blockbuster “The Big House,” a prison drama with Wallace Beery as a hard-boiled murderer.