THE ICONIC SHOES FROM 1939’S ‘THE WIZARD OF OZ’ ARE NOW THE WORLD’S MOST VALUABLE PIECE OF MOVIE MEMORABILIA
By Robert Wilonsky
On December 7, Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers sold at Heritage Auctions for a price somewhere over the rainbow, way up high: $32.5 million.
One of four surviving pairs worn by Judy Garland in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, the slippers that sold at Heritage are now the most famous – and, by far, the most valuable movie memorabilia ever sold at auction. That single pair of shoes also helped Heritage’s most recent Hollywood/Entertainment Signature® Auction set the record for an entertainment auction: $38,615,188. That shatters the $22.8 million realized during the 2011 Debbie Reynolds auction held by Heritage Auctions Executive Vice President Joe Maddalena.
The Ruby Slippers sold by Heritage are the cross-matched sister shoes to the pair at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. In 2005, they were famously stolen while on loan to the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.
“There is simply no comparison between Judy Garland’s Ruby Slippers and any other piece of Hollywood memorabilia,” Maddalena says. “The breathtaking result reflects just how important movies and movie memorabilia are to our culture and to collectors. It’s been a privilege for all of us at Heritage to be a part of the slippers’ epic journey over the rainbow and off to a new home.”
There were numerous star attractions spanning cinema’s rich history throughout this event, but none stood taller or shined brighter than the Technicolor treasures from The Wizard of Oz, which sparked a bidding war that lasted nearly as long as a walk down The Yellow Brick Road.
Heritage auctioneer Mike Sadler during the live auction of the Ruby Slippers on December 7. The low pre-auction estimate for the legendary footwear was $3 million, but intense bidding drove the final price to more than 10 times that amount. Photo by Josh David Jordan.
Live bidding opened at $1.55 million. Several thrilling minutes later, as bidding hit million-dollar increments, the slippers hit their final price, and the auction room erupted with applause. The pre-auction estimate for the slippers was $3 million and up. They surpassed that within seconds.
No other pair had ever come close to that final number.
One pair of Ruby Slippers sold at auction in 2000 for $666,000. A dozen years later, Steven Spielberg and Leonardo DiCaprio spent $2 million on the pair donated to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. DiCaprio led the group of donors that allowed for the 2012 sale, which was brokered by Profiles in History, the auction house founded by Maddalena.
The pair that sold at Heritage was famously stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, in the summer of 2005; recovered 13 years later by the FBI; and returned to owner Michael Shaw earlier this year before he handed them over to Heritage for inclusion in the December 7 Hollywood/Entertainment Signature® Auction, which drew more than 1,800 bidders worldwide.
Heritage Auctions Senior Director of Hollywood & Entertainment Brian Chanes (far left) stands beside Ruby Slippers consignor Michael Shaw earlier this year when law enforcement officials returned the stolen shoes to their rightful owner in the very spot from which they were taken nearly 20 years earlier. Photo by Josh David Jordan.
Upon their recovery in 2018, the FBI took the slippers to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where conservators compared them to the museum’s pair donated in 1979. The FBI later said, “Examination of the recovered shoes showed that their construction, materials, and wear are consistent with the pair in the museum’s collection.”
Dorothy’s slippers were designed by Gilbert Adrian, MGM’s chief costume designer, and made by Western Costume Company using white silk pumps from the Innes Shoe Company in Los Angeles.
Shaw’s slippers were once known as “The Traveling Shoes” because of their long, storied exhibition history. The pair has since been renamed “The Stolen Pair” given the backstory that involved an elderly thief in ill health, 77-year-old Terry Jon Martin, who confessed in court documents last year to stealing the Ruby Slippers because he wanted to pull off “one last score.”
The Wicked Witch’s hat from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ realized $2.93 million after another lengthy bidding war during Heritage’s December 7 auction.
Like the Ruby Slippers, the Wicked Witch’s hat in this auction was part of Shaw’s Hollywood on Tour during the 1980s and ’90s. Shaw obtained it from legendary collector Kent Warner, who discovered the Ruby Slippers at the historic David Weisz Co. MGM Auction in 1970. Says Maddalena, who has handled more Wizard of Oz memorabilia and props than any other auctioneer, including Dorothy’s blue dress and the Witch’s hourglass: “This is the finest example of the Wicked Witch’s hat known to exist.”
That explains why it realized $2.93 million after yet another lengthy bidding war.
It’s also the only one to feature inside its brim, “M. Hamilton 4461-164” – referring to, of course, Margaret Hamilton, the former kindergarten teacher who loved children yet became the source of so many nightmares. As with the slippers, the legendary Adrian designed this iconic piece of Hollywood history during his historic tenure at MGM; the hat is also featured in the book The Wizardry of Oz. Before December 7, the Wicked Witch’s hat had changed hands only once in more than half a century.
The slippers and hat were joined by numerous other treasures from Oz, including producer Mervyn LeRoy’s copy of the script from the MGM art department, which sold for $50,000; the screen door from Dorothy’s Kansas home, which sold for $37,500; Judy Garland’s “Dorothy Gale” wig from the first week of shooting, which realized $30,000; and the MGM contract signed by “Over the Rainbow” songwriters Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg, which dared to dream a final price of $23,125.
ROBERT WILONSKY is a staff writer at Intelligent Collector.