The ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz have clicked their heels into history once again, selling for an amount somewhere over the rainbow.
The ruby slippers that just sold were one of only four surviving pairs made for the classic movie. The other three pairs are kept at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, and an anonymous private collection. These slippers weren’t just props — they were stars in their own right. The footwear Dorothy sported in L. Frank Baum’s original 1900 children’s book were silver shoes, adapted into a ruby-red design to dazzle audiences given the use of Technicolor. Experts have pinpointed this pair in several famous scenes, including Dorothy’s iconic trek down the Yellow Brick Road. The orange felt attached to the soles, visible in some pictures, was used to muffle the noise the shoes made on the Yellow Brick Road itself.
In addition to the slippers’ adventures on set with Dorothy, they encountered an adventure all their own. They were stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in her hometown of Grand Rapids, Minnesota, in 2005, vanishing for over a decade before the FBI recovered them in a dramatic 2018 sting operation. Under the false impression that the shoes contained real rubies, the thief learned the hard way that the sparkle was all Hollywood magic (or rather, just a lot of sequins and beads). Hoping to bring the slippers home, the Judy Garland Museum received $100,000 in state funding to reclaim the slippers but bowed out early as bids skyrocketed past their $3 million high estimate.
The slippers smashed the previous record for Hollywood memorabilia, previously held by the iconic white dress Marilyn Monroe wore in The Seven Year Itch. Though the buyer remains a mystery, they created a little magic when they destroyed the Monroe dress’s comparatively modest $5.52 million price tag, paying $28 million ($32.5 million w/p) for the ruby-red slippers.