The question of exactly which absent nominees Crawford had offered to represent, and exactly how that offer was communicated, is one on which the documentary record is thin. The Wikipedia entry on the 35th Academy Awards documents that Crawford accepted on Bancroft’s behalf; the biographical literature confirms that Crawford had made arrangements in advance. The specific conversation between Crawford and Bancroft’s representatives—what was said, when it was said, who initiated it—has not been documented in any source accessible for this article.
What the available record does suggest is that Crawford’s participation was not improvisational. She was dressed for the ceremony. She was there to present the Best Director award—a formal role she had accepted in advance. And she was in a position to accept the Best Actress award if needed, which means the preparation had been made.
Davis’s allegation was not simply that Crawford accepted the award. It was that Crawford had maneuvered specifically to be the one to accept it—that she had offered herself as a proxy specifically for the contingency of Davis losing—and that the specific image of Crawford at the microphone was not accidental but designed. This claim, which requires attributing a specific intention to Crawford’s arrangements, is what the evidence cannot verify.
The image of Crawford at the microphone—available in the ceremony footage—is what it is: a proxy acceptance. The interpretation of that image as triumph, as deliberate performance of victory, as revenge—those are readings that depend on accepting Davis’s account of Crawford’s motivations, and Davis’s account is the account of someone with an enormous stake in a particular interpretation of the events.