Prize Fight: Inside An Oscar Family Feud

Anna Steiger, an acclaimed mezzo-soprano opera singer based in London and Paris, first surmised she’d been deceived after having a look last fall at Sir Laurence Olivier’s prosthetic nose from Richard III. It was on sale at the Hollywood auction house Julien’s. A friend thought it’d be of interest since her mother, British actress Claire Bloom, had co-starred in the 1955 film.

“Just by sheer chance, I thought, ‘I wonder if there’s anything of my father’s there, too,’ ” Steiger recalls. Her father being Rod Steiger, the Method acting icon best known for his role as police chief Bill Gillespie opposite Sidney Poitier in the 1967 film In the Heat of the Night. “And sure enough, a number of his things — which should’ve been my things,” she contends — “were being sold.” This included his Berlin Bear statuette for 1964’s The Pawnbroker, in which he played the title character, and his David Di Donatello award from the Academy of Italian Cinema for his starring turn in the controversial 1968 gay military drama The Sergeant.

The Academy Award for best actor that Steiger won for In the Heat of the Night wasn’t up for sale — Oscar rules forbid that. But Anna, 65, believes the other awards are rightfully her inheritances and were peddled by her stepsister to Julien’s following the death of Rod’s fifth and final wife, actress Joan Benedict, best known for playing Edith Fairchild on General Hospital.

Since then, Anna has embarked on a quixotic mission to pursue the objects. “It reminds me of Gianni Schicchi,” she says, referring to the Puccini comic opera inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy, which is about an inheritance battle. “Except so far, there’s no finality.”

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Steiger, an actors studio alum who grew up with an alcoholic mother and absent father, died in 2002. While he had his starring roles, his career was defined by playing imperious or impetuous tough guys: the mobster brother opposite Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, the politician in David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago, the judge in the Denzel Washington-fronted The Hurricane.

He was married to Bloom, his second wife, for a decade beginning in 1959. The couple met when both were working on a Broadway adaptation of Rashomon. Anna recalls spending time with them in Malibu as a child pre- and post-divorce. (They separated when she was 9.) “He had this place in the Colony before the area was built up,” she says. “It was just tumbleweeds flying about. It was all still very bohemian out there.”

Steiger’s Oscar triumph with In the Heat of the Night, the social realist drama about racism in the American South, came in a stacked category of nominees that year: Warren Beatty for Bonnie and Clyde, Dustin Hoffman for The Graduate, Paul Newman for Cool Hand Luke and the late Spencer Tracy for Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. The 40th Academy Awards telecast, held April 10, 1968, had been postponed by two days because of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. “Most importantly, I’d like to thank Mr. Poitier for the pleasure of his friendship, which gave me the knowledge and understanding of prejudice in order to enhance my performance,” Steiger told the audience at the end of his acceptance speech. “Thank you, and we shall overcome.”

Bloom, now 94, who accompanied him to the Oscars that evening, tells The Hollywood Reporter that her then-husband was not like Brando, scorning industry accolades. The Academy Award “meant everything to him — he wanted it desperately, perhaps more than others, because he’d come from nothing and worked himself up,” she says. “It’d been such a great struggle.”

Steiger displayed his statuettes on his mantel for all to see. “He wasn’t the type to put them in the bathroom,” Anna explains. “He was very proud of them — as you should be. They represent quite an achievement.”

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In 2000, Steiger wed Benedict, herself a seasoned working actress whom he’d met and briefly dated decades earlier. They lived in Malibu and traveled the world together before he died two years later. “Joan was a sweet woman,” Anna says. “I liked her. There was no problem between us.”

Yet there was some wrangling after Steiger’s death over his estate. Attorneys hammered out a legal agreement in 2003 stipulating trust terms, financial distributions and other property issues. Anna shared the documentation with THR. Among its provisions was that Benedict would retain possession of Steiger’s awards until her own death but agreed not to sell or otherwise dispose of them. It also specified that when Benedict died, the items would go to Anna, who in turn was also forbidden from selling them — and agreed to leave them to the Motion Picture Academy or a similar organization upon her death.

Soon after Benedict died in June 2024 of complications from a stroke, Anna wrote Benedict’s sole child, Claudia Myhers, offering condolences and inquiring about the awards she was to inherit. Myhers — who was raised by and took the name of Benedict’s second husband, actor John Myhers, best known as Bert Bratt in the 1967 film How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying — responded by candidly sharing how she felt about caretaking her mother.

“She was quite a handful for the last 6 years suffering from advanced dementia,” Myhers wrote in correspondence, which was shown to THR. “She threw anything and everything away daily.” Myhers noted that Benedict left her “in a huge financial mess taking care of her cremation etc.”

Myhers, a onetime TV movie producer, added, “As far as the awards I have only one possibility that I remember she had some storage unit in her old Malibu condo, there was a space she used. I hadn’t given it a thought in years until this.” She continued, wondering why Anna didn’t ensure that she received her father’s awards earlier: “I’m so sorry this was not meant to be this way for you. You deserve some treasures of his great talent.”

Anna says she followed up with a woman who once worked for her father’s business manager to assess if there was a storage unit. “She said, ‘No, there isn’t,’ and she also said, ‘This [situation] doesn’t feel right. Look into it.’ Of course, she was right.”

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Months later, after learning of the Julien’s auctions, Anna contacted the firm to contest the sales of the trophies but never heard back. Frustrated, she tried again, posing as an interested buyer with the pseudonym “Lily Pons,” after the French American singer who made 1930s musicals at RKO Pictures: “My tiny, pathetic bit of sleuthing, I suppose. But they did answer my question about the seller — ‘a family member.’ I knew who that was.”

Desperate, Anna seriously considered purchasing the Berlin Bear and David Di Donatello statuette (“My favorite one to look at”) from Julien’s herself. “I was going a bit mad,” she says. “I thought, ‘It’s cheaper than going to court, even though this is disgustingly unfair.’ Then I realized it was just ridiculous.” (The Berlin Bear sold for $9,100, and the David Di Donatello went for $3,900.)

Julien’s declined to address whether it undertook chain-of-title research before selling the Steiger items. In a statement to THR, the auction house explained, “Julien’s reviews documentation related to provenance whenever provided to authenticate consigned property. In this instance, we received emails from Anna Steiger claiming she had a right to the property, but never correspondence from legal counsel with any agreement substantiating her claims.”

Anna finds this irresponsible. “You’d think they’d respond and ask for what they need,” she says, adding, “It’s very shabby if you ask me.”

Fed up, Anna hired a private investigator suggested by a friend of a friend who’s an entertainment mogul. It didn’t take long for her to receive a dossier from the operative. The file, reviewed by THR and based on interviews with half a dozen named individuals in regular contact with Benedict at her Beverly Hills apartment before her death, echoed Anna’s suspicions. It contended that while Benedict suffered from memory loss, she remained sharp about the cultural importance of her late husband and cherished his possessions. The dossier also included a text message, sent after Benedict’s death, in which Myhers told an associate, “Tomorrow I meet the lady for posters and awards.”

The P.I. visited Myhers at home, inquiring about the awards. She denied possessing them and claimed her mother had lost them or thrown them away.

THR made several attempts to reach Myhers, who declined to answer questions. She rushed off the phone when informed of this coverage during a recent call: “I’m sorry, I’m going into a surgery right now.” Later, by email, she claimed never to have spoken with THR.

Public records suggest that the past year has been a challenging one for Myhers. Soon after her mother’s death, her ex-husband went to court, requesting leave from continuing to pay spousal support after 17 years.

Her boyfriend, a TV director, died in February. A month earlier, the Palisades Fire swept through Myhers’ neighborhood, permanently displacing thousands of residents. The condo she rented was spared, but nearby blocks were scorched. The homes left standing in the immediate area are unlivable, requiring costly and time-consuming repairs.

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Anna flew from London to L.A. in April on a fact-finding mission that included a visit to the Academy, hoping to attain a replica of her father’s Oscar (“It turns out that it’s only possible if you’re the recipient, not the child of the recipient”) and meet with its legal department, which assured her that it would intervene with a cease-and-desist notice if Steiger’s statuette went up for sale.

She thought about confronting Myhers in person, hoping “the shock of seeing me” after more than a decade would trigger a breakthrough — then thought better of it: “I kept thinking about what happened with O.J. Simpson in Las Vegas,” she explained, referring to the incident when he ended up in prison over a 2007 dispute involving his memorabilia. “I was thinking, ‘I’m not going to be pushing my way in.’ I had no intention of creating a scene.” Besides, she reasoned, after all that had transpired, her stepsister simply wasn’t going to hand over the Oscar: “There’s no way she’s going to say, ‘Oops, I just found [it] in the closet.’ It would just make it worse.”

Anna, who’s decided against a lawsuit (“I spoke with a lawyer who said the chances are you’ll end up with nothing and go mad”), is indifferent to the notion of any mitigating circumstances or misunderstandings that might have led Myhers to sell the awards. “I don’t have any sympathy,” Anna says. “The bit that upsets me the most is that I think there’s a great level of cruelty here. I know that I would feel dreadful if I held back something personal from someone’s child.”

Bloom sees her daughter’s quest as honorable. “It’s to do with her great love for her father,” she says. “She felt it was her duty to her father to do what she could to take care of his legacy.”

This story appeared in the July 23 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.