MONTCLAIR, N.J. -- The thief who took the Academy Award won by actress Olympia Dukakis for her portrayal of Cher's Italian-American mother in 'Moonstruck' was either a big Oscar fan or in a big hurry.
Nothing else was taken in a break-in last week at Dukakis's New Jersey home, not even the Golden Globe or the Comedy Award for 'Moonstruck' that were standing on the same kitchen table as the Oscar.
'When the police came, they said that's the pattern,' Dukakis's husband, Louis Zorich, said Friday. 'They just come in for the money or something and then leave.'
Dukakis was in Los Angeles, filming a movie with Jack Lemmon and Ted Danson, when her award for 1987's best supporting actress was stolen, Zorich said.
She was disappointed, but 'she didn't feel too badly, as long as nothing else was damaged,' he said.
Dukakis, who used her Oscar acceptance speech last year in part to put in a plug for her cousin, Massachusetts governor and then-presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, has never been interested in putting the Oscar anywhere more secure than the kitchen, Zorich said.
'That's where most of us are most of the time,' he said of his wife and their son and daughter. 'That's where we congregate. No, we never put it into a vault or a safety deposit box.'
Zorich, co-founder with Dukakis of The Whole Theatre in Montclair, said that he, the couple's son and a friend of the son returned home from a mime performance early last Saturday when they discovered someone had broken in through a window. Bureau drawers in two bedrooms had been rifled but nothing but the Oscar was taken.
Dukakis has contacted the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in hopes of obtaining a duplicate Oscar, but Zorich said he has a 'deep-down feeling' that the original will turn up.
'I don't know why,' he said. 'It would be very hard to get rid of (by pawning or selling). I was telling someone the other day, it'll probably end up on somebody's mantel somewhere.'
