Judy Garland’s Ruby Slippers from The Wizard of Oz Sell for $28 Million at Auction, Setting a New Record

There’s no place like an auction!

Judy Garland’s iconic ruby-red slippers from The Wizard of Oz went under the hammer. on Saturday, December 7th at a live auction in Dallas, Texas. Exceeding their $25 million estimate, the shoes sold for $28 million.

These are one of only four known pairs of ruby ​​slippers worn by Garland in the film. The auctioneers from Heritage Auctions called them “the Holy Grail of Hollywood memorabilia”, reports the BBC.

“There is simply no comparison between Judy Garland’s ruby ​​slippers and any other piece of Hollywood memorabilia,” said the auction house’s executive vice president, Joe Maddalena. The New York Times.

Including the auction house’s fee, the undisclosed buyer will ultimately pay $32.5 million for the shoes.

That sale price made them the most valuable piece of movie memorabilia ever sold at auction. The previous record holder — the white dress worn by Marilyn Monroe in the 1955 film The Seven Year Itch — sold in 2011 for (only) $5.52 million with fees, according to the auction house.

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The shoes were one of between 6 and 10 pairs created for the film.

Silver Screen Collection/Getty

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Per guard, “quick bidding” beat estimates “within seconds and tripled them within minutes.” The big winning bid drew applause in the auction room.

It wasn’t the only part The Wizard of Oz memorabilia at auction. One of Margaret Hamilton’s black Wicked Witch of the West hats sold for nearly $3 million.

But the shoes were the main attraction, their sale coming nearly two decades after they were stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in Minnesota in 2005.

The sequined shoes were bought by Michael Shaw in 1970 before being taken by ex-mobster Terry Jon Martin while on loan to the museum. They were found in 2018, and the FBI revealed in a press release that they discovered the shoes in Minneapolis while investigating a fraud and extortion scheme by the Markel Corporation, which owned the pumps.

Martin, meanwhile, pleaded guilty to stealing them in October 2023. in January 2024, he was sentenced to time served, one year of supervised release and $23,000 in restitution.

In the original book, Dorothy’s shoes were silver, not red.

Astrid Stawiarz/Getty

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Shaw’s slippers — one of between six and 10 pairs created for Garland to wear in the film — are “matching sister shoes to a pair at the Smithsonian Institution,” according to Heritage Auctions.

Their sales coincide with renewed interest in the musical following the theatrical release of the prequel evil, starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo.

If fans are wondering why the iconic shoes are nowhere to be seen Wickedthis is because L. Frank Baum did not originally intend for Dorothy’s shoes to be red when he wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900.

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Silver shoes in ‘Wicked’.

Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures

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Paul Tazewell, Wickedcostume designer, he recalled to PEOPLE in November that “in the book, it was these weird little silver boots.” But that’s why The Wizard of Oz film shot in Technicolor for 1939, the studio wanted to take advantage of the many colors at its disposal, so MGM’s costume designer Gilbert Adria strayed outside of Baum’s 1900 novel.

Tazewell took the original book concept as his starting point and went from there.

Wicked it’s in theaters now.

Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education