| Judy Garland's Ruby Slippers |
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| "The most famous piece of motion picture history" |
| Judy Garland's ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz are a national treasure, worth possibly millions, but once they were thought to be so insignificant, they were destined for the trash. The ruby slippers are the most recognizeable shoes in all Hollywood history. They need no explaination, everyone knows what they are, who wore them, and what they need. They are the indelible icon of a uniquely American fairy tale. An enduring symbol of the power of belief. They are also worth a fortune, which is power in itself. They are also objects of obsession, the Wicked Witch of the West was certainly obsessed by them, and possessed by the promise of their power. But the charm and power of Dorothy's shoes goes far beyond the pages of a book or the scenes of a movie; they have assumed a power of their own that is very real. The fabled shoes are on perpetual display at the Smithsonian Instution in Washington D.C. Every year upwards of five million people visit the national treasure. The curator of the Smithsonian Institution, Charles McGovern has said of the shoes, "We don't clock individual numbers here, but I can tell you whenever we've had to take the shoes off for any reason what-so-ever, we get irate phone calls, dissapointed little girls from all over the country come to see these things." |
| He continues by saying, "They are without a doubt one of the most popular items on display here." Visiters are inexplicably drawn to the shoes that carried lost Dorothy along the yellow brick road in search of the fearsome wizard. Mr. McGovern has also said, " I recently got a letter from a little girl, who asked me if the shoes still work, and I wrote her back and I said 'Well, if your asking do we wear the shoes still? No, we don't because they're fragile and they could fall apart, but if your asking are they still magic', I said 'Well, the magic's always in you." They're magic, if you believe, first you have to believe that they're really Judy Garland's ruby slippers. The museum knows that they're from the movie, but what they don't know is weither Judy Garland ever put her feet in the well worn pair of shoes. The Smithsonian's dilemma is part of a confounding mystery about what really happened to the ruby slippers from M-G-M's classic |
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| The Wizard of Oz. Since May 1970, this question has preoccupied countless people who have followed this story from studio backlots and prop houses into a bizzare underworld where the best pieces of Hollywood memoribilia where once up for grabs. What is known is that the Smithsonian's ruby slippers are authentic, but they are not the only pair in existance. But how could this be? Well, the Land of Oz was a very differnt place than the Land of Hollywood. In the Land of Oz there was just one pair of magic shoes but in Hollywood, "As a rule, we had two costumes made, when we did a dance number there was always two costumes made.", Debbie Reynolds explained. The reason was simple to any Hollywood insider, if an important costume was damaged during production, they coudn't |
| stop filming until a new costume was made, they had to have extras, such was the case with Judy Garland's ruby slippers. "They always had a pair imminently ready to go. It wasn't like 'Oh well, let's go make a new pair now, no, they made them way ahead of time.", she continued to explain. Once more, Judy Garland had a stand-in, who also wore the ruby slippers, so how many differnt pairs did they have? Debbie Renynolds says their were five pairs, or where their six, as a newspaper headline once sugguested saying, "Six Oz pairs sold-& there may be more". Philip Samuls left slipper is inscribed "#7 JUDY GARLAND", which would suggest seven pairs, so how many pair where there? The costume records for The Wizard of Oz where thrown away, so nobody knows for sure how many were actually made. The answer might not seem so important, if they weren't worth so much money. |
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| Today, the ruby slippers are considered the Holy Grail of all Hollywood memoribilia, with an estimated value topping a million dollars per pair. So how many pairs actually exist? To find out, one must journey back through time, to the epic year when the ruby slippers were made. One of Hollywood's greatest ironys is the very existance of the RUBY slippers. Originally they wern't that color. In L. Frank Baum's classic book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900, Dorothy's magic shoes are made of precious metal, silver. In Baum's book, one of the muchkins tells Dorothy, "The Wicked Witch of the East was proud of those siver shoes, and there is some charm connected with them, but what it is we never knew." We never knew either becouse the silver shoes where never seen on the silver screen. |
| The Wizard of Oz was big in every Hollywood sense of the word. Louis B. Mayor spent three million dollars was to produce a movie useing Kodak's new Technicolor film, he wasn't going to settle for black and white shoes. In 1938, M-G-M assigned a studio scrpt writer, Noel Langley, to adapt the children's book to the screen. Langley faced many challanges in the work, including what to do about the color of Dorothy's shoes. Sometime between May 14 and June 4th 1938, the first and last recorded revisions he made to the Oz script, a Hollywood decision was made. Page 26, Scene number 113, "When Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, waves her wand, and the shoes belonging to the recently squished Wicked Witch of the East, magically appear on the feet of unsuspecting Dorothy." Here, the typed word "Silver" was scratched out, and "Ruby" written in, by the stroke of the screenwriters hand, Dorothy Gale's Silver Shoes became Judy Garland's Ruby Slippers. What the screenwriter didn't know was |
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| that the shoes he created would assume a unique and powerful charm of their own. Everyone knows what the ruby slippers are, but few people know what they actually look like. For the 50th anniversery of the movie in 1989, the Franklin Mint created an authorized Dorothy doll,said to be completely authentic, right down to the ruby slippers. Unfortunatly, they forgot the bows, coincidentally, the first designs for the ruby slippers didn't have bows either. M-G-M production number 1060 began in the summer of 1938. Among many who worked on the film, Gilbert Adren, known best by his sir name, Adren was one of the world's premiere fashion designers in the 1930's. Like other great artists, he came to Hollywood during the Depression. At M-G-M he designed some of the most famous gowns in movie history. For The Wizard of Oz, Adren created hundreds of magnificent costumes, including those for the muchkins, these took most of his time. Almost conincidental where the ruby slippers, which actually evolved from one design to another. Several different looks were tested. |
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| people have visted the Ruby Slippers section of my site since July 26th, 2002 |