Ruby in paradise: The slippers in a scene from “The Wizard of Oz”. (
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Philip Samuels (l-r), Joe Maddalena and Rhys Thomas take a look. (Evans Vestal Ward/Syfy)
They are the most famous shoes in the world, a piece of Hollywood culture so iconic that all you have to say is “Click your heels three times” and everyone will know what you’re talking about.
The ruby slippers from “The Wizard of Oz.” Only four sets remain: those in the Smithsonian, the pair stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minn., a mismatched pair owned by collector Michael Shaw and the “beauty pair” used for close-ups such as Dorothy’s exit scene with Glinda the Good Witch. The latter sells this week on the season premiere of “Hollywood Treasures.”
Memorabilia magnate Joe Maddalena fetches a princely sum for the sequined shoes — we’re talking $2 million — but first he has to wrest them out of the hands of former owner Philip Samuels. Samuels bought the slippers at Christie’s in 1988 for $180,000, and then hid them away in a place called Hollywood Vaults.
Sounds like the name of a cemetery or a post-Botox recovery room for A-list actors, but it’s really a climate-controlled, high-end storage facility in the mid-Wilshire neighborhood with security cameras and guards with muscle T-shirts and Popeye arms. Maddalena is escorted to the vault along with ruby-slipper expert Rhys Thomas. One of the vaults is unlocked and a black briefcase is removed. Maddalena says he felt like he was in an episode of “Mission: Impossible,” but instead of being handed the test tube of nitroglycerin, he was given a pair of white gloves and allowed to touch the precious slippers. For the Hollywood collector, this is a religious moment.
“They are the most famous movie artifacts in the world,” Maddalena says.
“It’s the holy grail,” says Thomas, author of “The Ruby Slippers of Oz.”
The first thing you notice about the slippers is that they are not really red. With the technology available to cameramen in 1939, red was too hot a color. “To get these shoes to appear red onscreen was a chore,” Maddalena says. “The Technicolor process was very primitive. Red comes out this ridiculous color. The muted pink with burgundy sequins combo [on the slippers] picked up the light and popped red.”
Thomas examined the slippers for other signs of authenticity. The most persuasive proof was on the soles, which were red leather, indicating that these were used for Garland’s scene at the end when she clicks her heels three times. (She wore different slippers, with orange felt on the bottom, when she was dancing on the yellow brick road — which was actually made of plywood — and running through the poppy field.)
Samuels’ slippers also had the distinctive tag JUDY GARLAND #7 written in pencil inside, indicating these were custom-made for the star and not her double, Bobbie Koshay.
Hollywood collectibles are big business. Last year, Maddalena sold Debbie Reynolds’ collection of treasures for $35 million. His company, Profiles in History, employs a full-time staff of 12 and can rake in as much as $50 million per year from auctions, usually six of them, held at the Paley Center for Media in Beverly Hills. There, wealthy clients send representatives on their behalf to bid on everything from scripts and costumes such as the green derby Jim Carrey wore as the Riddler in “Batman Forever” ($4,000) to more expensive and rarer items.
This season, Maddalena will be selling off the impressive Dreier collection in Santa Barbara. The catalog includes the costumes worn by Christopher Reeve and Marlon Brando in “Superman,” as well as costumes from the movies “Austin Powers” and “Saving Private Ryan.”
“Every day, you just don’t know what’s going to happen,” Maddalena says. “You just wait for the phone to ring.”
If it seems crazy that anyone would pay so much money for 75-year-old shoes, Maddalena asks that you keep things in perspective.
“A Warhol ‘Elizabeth Taylor’ is $26 million,” he says. “A Superman comic book sold for $2 million. Compared to other things, this field is really inexpensive.”