| MORE ON... Judy Garland's Ruby Slippers |
| The initial designs had no bows, they were used in the first round of filming when Richard Thorp was directing. Then in October 1938, Thorp was fired, Victor Fliming replaced him and they started over. Among many changes, Dorothy got a makeover (removing her curly blond wig and half of her makeup), and she also got a new style of magic shoes. Given the extra time, Adren created a wild looking pair of slippers, almost elfish, curling at the heel and toe, they came to be known as the Arabian Test pair. "They truely are unique, with the toe coming up, and the little flap, and the little low heel. These are my favorites, I know that Judy wore them, I know that she liked them best of all by the way, she said 'I want the ones with the pointed toe.," Debbie Reynolds explained, she is the owner of the Arabian Test pair. |
| Although Judy liked them, they looked strange on plain Dorothy's feet, so Adren simply added jeweled bows to the first style, this became the final ruby slipper design, and doubles where ordered for Judy Garland and her stand-in. The foundation was a basic french-heeled pump purchased from the Innes Shoes Co. in Hollywood, California. The sequined overlays and bows where made at M-G-M. Each overlay had 2,300 sequins (each hand sewn into the overlay, each sequin 1/16th of an inch or 6mm), and each bow had dozens of rhinstones (which border the bow) and bugel beads (which fill in between the rhinstones and the bows three central rectangular stones) and the three central rectangular stones. In 1938, they cost about |
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| $13 a pair. Orange felt was added to the soles of the shoes to muffel the noise made during the dance scenes, this being that M-G-M's yellow brick road was actually made of plywood. Only one pair was kept without the felt, the pair used for close up shots. In time this would become an important destinction for collectors. When production finished, the shoes along with all the other unique costumes where packed up and put in M-G-M's form of deep storage, for all practical purposes they were put away for thirty years, left to rot. Nobody at M-GM knew or cared, and so began the legend of the missing ruby slippers. |
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| On Judy's right foot is the Arabian Test shoes, while the shoe on her left foot is the Bugle Bead shoes, which have never publically surfaced. |
| 1970 was a peculiar year in Hollywood history, the original movie moguls where fading from the scene, being replaced by men from Wall Street. At Metro Goldwyn Mayor, it wasn't just a corporate take over, it was a raid. That year, the entire studio was sold to a reclusive financier named Kirk Kerkorian. He immedenty cashed out, selling studio property to finance a new casino in Las Vegas, the M-G-M Grand. The whole sale liquidation was highlighted by a lucrative land sale, which included M-G-M's storied backlots, studio lots two, three, four, and five. The land was worth a fortune, but the contents of the land, the phyical property stored on the backlots was seriously undervalued. This was M-G-M's closet, to Louis B. Mayor it was the world's largest movie making warehouse a veritable treasure chest of antiques, artwork, machinery and costumes. But to Wall Street it was nothing but a burden of storage and maintance, it was junk. Kerkorian could have kept some of the historic memoribilia to display in his casino, but he sold everything to an auctioneer named David Wice for a mere one point five million dollars. A single pair of ruby slippers is worth that today. David Wice bought an unbelieveable assortment of Hollywood treasures, from Ben-Hur's chariots, to the HMS Bounty, to Clark Gable's coats and Greta Garbo gowns. There were cars, trains, plains, tanks, and the full sized paddlewheeler from Showboat. Costumes alone filled seven buildings; oevr 350,000 seperate items. The auctioneer was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of material. But he recognized the celebrity value connected to some of the items, so he decided to hold a well-publicized star auction. Afterwards, he presided over the largest and saddest garage sale Hollwood had ever known. |
| Ms Reynolds remembers the auction by saying, " It was so sad, and it was so ridiculous, and so narrow-minded, and just, stupid is the word. And I've never forgotten it, and I've never gotten over it, and I'm even still angry about it." The M-G-M auction of May 1970 was like a eighteen day wake for Hollywood. "I sobbed every day uncontrollably. I was like this having-a-breakdown-person, and people just thought, and would look and go 'Well what is the matter with her?'" The auction officially began on May 1st, and culminated with the star wardrobe sale on May 17th. It was a magnificent production in itself. Debbie Reynolds was there for every moment of it, checkbook in hand. Her goal was to preserve as much of Hollywood's history as she could, before the studios threw it all away. "I was everyday at auction for three to four weeks, as long as it went. I wasn't into buying the rose bushs, and all of the, the lamp posts, and I couldn't really buy the airplanes, I did buy cars and I did buy sets, which means the furnature from a picture and the |
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| costumes so I could recreate a famous scene from every famous motion picture that had won an Academy Award from M-G-M." Ms Reynolds continues. Reynolds spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to save countless Hollywood treasures. But strangely, she didn't bid a dime for the ruby slippers. In truth, nobody expected much action from the frumpy pair of sequined shoes, but when the gavel came down at fifteen thousand dollars, they became the most valuable memoribilia in Hollywood history. |
| Imagine the suprise of Roberta Bauman a Memphis housewife on Monday morning May 18th 1970, there she was, reading the paper in her kitchen, when a story from Culver City, California caught her eye. The headline read: "Ruby Slippers From 'Wizard of Oz' Bring $15,000 Bid." "I said, lookie here, one pair of shoes brought fifteen thousand dollars, out in, Culver City" Ms Bauman explained. The paper said M-G-M had auctioned the shoes the day before. Roberta was suprised becouse she had the ruby slippers in her closet and thought they were the only pair. Within hours Roberta's story and photograph hit the newswires. There she was, holding her pair of ruby slippers. Suddenly, the press had a mystery to solve, one headline reading: "Mystery Arises Over Judy's Ruby Slippers" Roberta said she had won |
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| them in a movie contest, and had proof to back it up. In high school she had belonged to a club, the Photoplay Club, which watched and reviewed movies. The year was 1939, Hollywood's epic year. Roberta was a jounier. That winter the members of the Photoplay club entered a contest. "Metro Goldwyn Mayor had a promotion, and we were send a postcard to New York to vote on the ten best pictures of 1939.", she explained. Roberta voted Gone With The Wind number one, she can't recall where she placed The Wizard of Oz. Her picks where good enough to get second place in the contest, her prize, the ruby red slippers. The six 6B shoes where presented to her in the spring of 1940, she was sixteen years old, Dorothy's age. For thirty years Roberta believed she had the only pair of ruby slippers. "I had no idea, and I didn't at that time know how many pairs were out there," She explained. |
| Between 1940 and 1970 Roberta enjoyed shareing her pair of magic shoes with the public. But news of the M-G-M auction changed everything. For Roberta it was the first of many gigantic twists down her own yellow brick road. At first she thought one of the pairs had to be facks, and she worried that the fakes might be her's. Fearing the worst, she called her old high school teacher, Miss Josaphine Alansworth. "I said, you know Miss Josaphine, we wern't told anything about these shoes, and I don't know how many pairs are they, and what should I do? She said, 'Challange them, go up to the newspaper and tell about it, how you recieved them in high school.' and that's what I did." She explained. But the press found no answers, so she decided to contact M-G-M directly. |