Dallas, Texas —
On Saturday, a pair of red shoes worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz was sold at auction for a record-breaking $28 million. That makes the slippers the most expensive movie item ever sold. The sale is the latest chapter in the slippers’ complicated history.
The classic movie The Wizard of Oz was first shown in movie theaters in 1939. In the movie, a young girl named Dorothy gets lost and has an adventure in a magical land. Along the way, she gets a pair of special red “ruby slippers”. At the end of the movie, Dorothy learns she is able to return home by clicking the heels of her shoes together three times, and saying, “There’s no place like home.”
(Source: MGM, via Wikimedia Commons.)
The movie and the ruby slippers are famous around the world. The movie was based on the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum. In the book, the slippers are silver. The movie makers changed the color of the slippers to red so that the shoes would show up better.
During the making of the movie, Ms. Garland used many different pairs of ruby slippers. Some were used for close-ups and others were used for dancing. After the movie was made, the shoes were stored away and forgotten. In the 1970s, someone found and sold the old shoes.
A man named Michael Shaw bought one pair of the shoes for $2,000. He made money by renting the shoes out. In 2005, he loaned the shoes to the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. But someone broke into the museum, smashed a glass display case, and stole the slippers.
(Source: FBI.)
The shoes remained missing for 13 years. Then, in 2018, the FBI tracked down the slippers. It took five more years to catch the thief, who was in his 70s by that time.
The thief had never seen the movie. Police believe the man thought the shoes had real rubies on them. When he found out that they didn’t, he got rid of them.
Mr. Shaw finally got his shoes back in February of this year. Many collectors were excited when they heard that Mr. Shaw planned on selling the slippers. Heritage Auctions, the company that sold the slippers, thought that they might sell for around $3 million.
(Source: Heritage Auctions.)
But in less than a minute, the price rocketed past $3 million. For 15 minutes, the price continued to climb, as people offered more and more money. In the end, the slippers sold for $28 million.
So far, the name of the buyer has been kept a secret. But the buyer will wind up paying even more than that. With taxes and the costs of the auction company, the total came to $32.5 million.
The slippers set a new record for the highest price paid for a piece of movie history. The previous record came in 2011, when the white dress worn by Marilyn Monroe in the movie The Seven Year Itch sold for $5.52 million.
Did You Know…?
Some of the high interest in this auction may have to do with the movie Wicked, which has recently come out in theaters. Wicked tells a similar story, but from the point of view of the Wicked Witch of the West. Dorothy’s magic slippers also show up in Wicked, but, as in the original book, they are silver.
If you’re interested in reading the original book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, you can download it or read it online for free at Project Gutenberg.