Movie Memorabilia
Dallas auction house hawks stolen ruby slippers from Wizard of Oz
Wizard of Oz ruby slippers.
DALLAS (AP) — A pair of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz is on the auction block nearly two decades after a thief stole the iconic shoes, convinced they were adorned with real jewels.
Online bidding has started and will continue through December 7, Heritage Auctions in Dallas announced in a news release Monday.
The shoes are part of a bigger auction of Hollywood memorabilia which also includes items from films such as Cast Away, Easy Rider, and Back to the Future Part II.
Other items from The Wizard of Oz include a witch hat worn by Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the West, the screen door from Dorothy’s Kansas home, the gloves Bert Lahr wore as the Cowardly Lion, and producer Mervyn LeRoy’s copy of the Wizard of Oz script from the MGM art department.
The auction company received the sequin-and-bead-bedazzled slippers from Michael Shaw, the memorabilia collector who originally owned the footwear at the heart of the beloved 1939 musical. Shaw had loaned the shoes in 2005 to the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.
That summer, someone smashed through a display case and stole the slippers. Their whereabouts remained a mystery until the FBI recovered them in 2018. The man who stole the ruby slippers, Terry Jon Martin, was 76 when he was sentenced in January to time served because of his poor health.
Now the museum is among those vying for the slippers, which were one of several pairs Garland wore during the filming. Only four remain. This particular pair are considered to be the most valuable of the four, in that they were the ones used in close-ups of Dorothy clicking her heels.
Other items include a "Wilson" basketball from Tom Hanks film Cast Away; a stars-and-stripes motorcycle helmet worn by Peter Fonda in Easy Rider; and the “BAT-1/GOTHAM CITY” license plate from Adam West’s Batmobile; and a wooden hoverboard from Back to the Future Part II, signed by Michael J. Fox and writer-producer Bob Gale. According to Heritage Auctions, this Mattel hhoverboard has "impeccable provenance," as it comes from Fox’s stunt double Charlie Croughwell, who writes in his letter of authenticity that “this Hoverboard has been in my possession beginning with our first day of Flying Rehearsals up until present day.”
