Dorothy's ruby slippers, wicked witch's hat are among Hollywood treasures in Heritage Auctions sale
The Wizard of Oz (MGM, 1939), Margaret Hamilton Iconic Screen Matched "Wicked Witch of the West" Flying Hat from the "Arrival in Munchkinland" Sequence.
DALLAS, TX.—
If Judy Garland’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Ozwere the sole item in Heritage’s December 7 auction filled with treasures from cinema’s rich and vast history, it would already rank among the most important auctions ever held.
When Heritage announced in March that it would offer one of the four pairs of surviving ruby slippers from the 1939’s masterpiece, they garnered worldwide attention because of their backstory and beauty. This was the pair famously stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minn., in 2005 and recovered by the FBI in 2018 following an investigation worthy of its own big-screen telling. And as the Associated Press noted earlier this year, the pair owned and consigned by Michael Shaw are “believed to be the highest quality of all of them — they were the ones used in close-ups of Dorothy clicking her heels.”
The slippers began their celebrated worldwide tour in Japan in October, with stops in Dallas, New York and London still to come before they find their way to a new home in December. For months, would-be bidders and cinephiles have anxiously anticipated this moment because, as author Rhys Thomas wrote in his definitive book about The Ruby Slippers of Oz, they “were much more than just a piece of Hollywood memorabilia, much more than a valuable piece of industry history. They transcended Hollywood, to the point where they represented the powerful image of innocence to all America.”
The ruby slippers are joined in this event by the hat worn by Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz, screen-matched to the “Arrival in Munchkinland” sequence during which Dorothy first meets the cackling, green-skinned terror.
Like the ruby slippers, the Wicked Witch’s hat was part of Michael 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 Heritage Auctions Executive Vice President Joe 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.”
It’s also the only one to feature inside its brim, “M. Hamilton 4461-164” — referring, of course, to Margaret Hamilton, the former kindergarten teacher who loved children yet became the source of so many nightmares. Like 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. To call this a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity isn’t hyperbole, as the Wicked Witch’s hat has changed hands only once in more than half a century.
The slippers and hat are joined by 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, among other historic treasures from the beloved classic. Here, too, is a piece of Hollywood history incorporating the ruby slippers: artist Bill Mack’s painting of the pair on a panel of the original 1923 Hollywoodland sign that was removed in the late 1970s for a long-awaited restoration.
But the December 7 Hollywood/Entertainment Signature® Auction is rife with such pieces of invaluable cinematic history — the building blocks upon which blockbusters were built, key props from beloved films, magical moments from all your favorite movies and television shows, from The Godfather to Back to the Future Part II, The Omen to NBC’s Miami Vice, Jumanji to Rollerball, Cast Away to the original Star Trek series (the engineering panel straight from the bridge of the USS Enterprise!) and everything else you’ve ever seen, loved and memorized.
“The ruby slippers and Wicked Witch’s hat stand at the pinnacle of Hollywood history,” says Maddalena. “The ruby slippers embody magic and innocence that resonate far beyond film, representing a true cultural icon. Meanwhile, the Wicked Witch’s hat adds an edge of cinematic legend to this auction. Together, they offer collectors a rare connection to The Wizard of Oz. Yet these are only a fraction of the treasures in this unprecedented event. It’s a truly once-in-a-lifetime auction that profoundly, sincerely celebrates film and television history.”
In this auction, collectors and cinephiles will find the screen-matched primary hero Jumanji game board — the very “game for those who seek to find a way to leave their world behind,” complete with four tokens and a pair of dice. “A supreme example of studio craftsmanship,” says the catalog, “this is arguably the most beautifully made film prop we’ve ever encountered.”
The game is joined in this event by a screen-matched “Wilson” from Cast Away, Tom Hanks’ iconic “co-star” from Robert Zemeckis’ 2000 film; Peter Fonda’s stars-and-stripes “Captain America” motorcycle helmet screen-used in Easy Rider; and the “BAT-1/GOTHAM CITY” license plate from Adam West’s Batmobile.
Heritage is especially proud to present the only screen-used hero “flying” wooden hoverboard from Back to the Future Part II, signed by Michael J. Fox and writer-producer Bob Gale and accompanied by its safety harness. This is the very hoverboard Marty McFly borrows from a little girl to escape a beating at the hands of Griff Tannen (Thomas Wilson) and his gang of brutes. This “Mattel” hoverboard has impeccable provenance, as it comes straight from the only other man to use it during production: 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.”
Croughwell is now parting with this iconic prop for one extraordinary reason: Fifty percent of the proceeds from its auction will go to The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.
So many items offered in this event are matchless and mythical, among them author Mario Puzo’s copy of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Notebook filled with Puzo’s annotations alongside those of the filmmaker. The Godfather Notebook – a three-ring binder overflowing with character studies and scene synopses and Coppola’s page-by-page, line-by-line breakdown of the best-seller — is such an essential piece of film history it was finally published to great acclaim in 2016. It’s as enthralling as Puzo’s novel; thumbing through its pages is almost as thrilling an experience as watching The Godfather.
As Coppola read the novel, he created a “prompt book,” which he called “an old tradition in theater” as it was meant to be used by the stage manager. As Coppola initially went through Puzo’s novel, the young filmmaker underlined passages and phrases, wrote notes in the margins, and then pasted those pages to larger sheets inserted into the binder. Coppola divided the novel into sections and then scenes, focused on “core” moments and warned of “pitfalls,” then made three copies — one for producer Al Ruddy, two for Puzo — and went to writing the screenplay, with Puzo’s input.
Coppola famously carried his The Godfather Notebook in a leather satchel. This one comes from Puzo’s assistant, Janet Snow, through whom the author would relay his changes to Coppola. (A copy of the novel, with an inscription from Puzo to Snow, is also included with the notebook and other significant memorabilia.) It bears Puzo’s handwritten notes alongside the filmmaker’s breakdowns and breakthroughs.
“The script was really an unnecessary document,” Coppola has said, “because I could’ve made the movie just from this notebook.”
The Godfather Notebook isn’t the only sourcebook in this auction straight from the author’s hands: In the same auction, you’ll find writer Doug Kenney’s hand-annotated script for Animal House and David Seltzer’s first draft of The Omen, then titled The Anti-Christ, along with his research materials straight from the creator’s collection. And from 1954 hails Harold Arlen’s final working manuscript for “The Man That Got Away,” performed by Judy Garland in A Star Is Born, accompanied by Ira Gershwin’s hand-edited and initialed lyric typescript.
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Miami Vice, Heritage presents creator Anthony Yerkovich’s first draft of the pilot “My Brother’s Keeper” — more than 180 pages on handwritten yellow legal paper. As critic Matt Zoller Seitz pointed out in his recent revisit of the landmark pilot, the late NBC executive Brandon Tartikoff never handed Yerkovich a napkin upon which he’d suggested a show about “MTV cops”; it was just a tall tale circulated by the media until it hardened into legend. As this draft reveals, the show’s pairing of former football hero-turned-undercover cop Sonny Crockett with New York City detective Ricardo Tubbs was there when Yerkovich first put ballpoint to paper.
“The 97-minute Miami Vice pilot (two hours with ad breaks) aired on commercial TV but felt like it should’ve been in a theater,” Seitz writes. “It was a shimmering postmodern neo-noir in the vein of movies like Paul Schrader’s American Gigolo, [Miami Vice executive producer Michael] Mann’s Thief, and Brian DePalma’s Miami-based remake of Scarface (to which Vice would often be compared). ... Another element in the mix was MTV, which debuted in 1981 and normalized a music-video aesthetic that was more about highlights and moments than literary concepts of conventional storytelling.”
This document, the genesis of not merely one show but every one that came after it, is so gripping that even just reading it, one can hear Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” buzzing in the background.
There is also some extraordinary original artwork in this auction, the first glimpse of posters that would become as iconic as the movies they were meant to advertise. The legendary Robert Peak’s original mixed media poster artwork for 1975’s Rollerball features James Caan (as Jonathan E.) sporting a spiked helmet and black spiked gauntlet — the tools of a warrior in a not-too-distant future where the bloodsport has replaced wars. It’s joined by more peak Peak: the artist’s original concept painting for the Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan poster.
One of literature and cinema’s most indelible images surfaces in artist John Holmes’ original painting for the 1974 Pan paperback version of Peter Benchley’s Jaws, published in the United Kingdom. At the time, Holmes was a surrealist best known for illustrating the covers of H.P. Lovecraft’s novels and other horror paperbacks. But he never crafted anything more terrifying than his vision of the great white shark lurking just below a nude woman taking her final swim.
