Dorothy's stolen ruby slippers from Wizard of Oz sold at auction for $28 million

8 December 2024, 14:35 | Updated: 8 December 2024, 14:42

The ruby red slippers worn by actress Judy Garland in 1939 musical the Wizard of Oz have sold at auction for a cool $28m (£22m).

The slippers known for being the "Holy Grail of Hollywood memorabilia" went on auction online one month ago.

The shoes were under-estimated by Heritage Auctions as they expected to them reach $3m (£2.35m) instead of the $28m (£22m) which it sold for, making them the most expensive film memorabilia ever sold at auction.

This sale happened alongside the recent release of the prequel film Wicked, staring Ariana Grande as Dorothy, which drew attention to this expensive purchase.

The film is based of L Frank Baum's 1900 children's book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, with Dorothy's shoes originally being silver, the producers wanted to use new Technicolor technology to make them red.

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While in the book, the magical slippers are silver, the producers for the film changed them to red to take advantage of the new 'Technicolor technology'.

The recently developed 'Technicolor technology' had only been used for the first time in a feature-length film in 1935.

In the film, Dorothy must click her heels three times and repeat "There's no place like home" in order to leave Oz and return to Kansas.

Multiple pairs of shoes were worn by Garland, but only four are known to have survived.

One pair was owned by collector, Michael Shaw, who had loaned the slippers to the Judy Garland Museum in Minnesota.

In 2005, one of the four shoes were stolen from the museum by professional thief Terry Jon Martin thinking that their inside value was $1million due to their gemstones.

As he was leaving the scene after smashing a window to get to them, he realised those 'gemstones' were just glass and gave them to someone else.

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Only in 2018 did the FBI find the shoes where they now exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

Martin pleaded guilty to stealing them in 2023 when was 70 and has served some time.

In an interview with CBS News Minnesota in 2023, John Kelsch, curator of the Judy Garland Museum said "Just to do it because he thought they were real rubies and to turn them over to a jewelry fence.

'I mean, the value is not rubies. The value is an American treasure, a national treasure. To steal them without knowing that seems ludicrous."