In an indelible scene from “The Wizard of Oz,” the vivacious green wicked witch imprisoned a frightened Dorothy by threatening her dog Toto if she wouldn’t give up her ruby slippers.
The scene was memorable not only for the bright red of Dorothy’s shoes, but also for her striking white-and-blue gingham apron dress—one of several worn by the teenage Judy Garland in one of the first major movies filmed in Technicolor, in 1939. .
“The dress was a legend, but no one had seen it since the late 1980s,” said Jacqueline Leary-Warsaw, dean of the school of music, drama and arts at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. † A priest who ran the drama department had been given the dress in 1973, but the university had lost track of it.
Now the university hopes to auction it for at least $1.2 million, which can be used to fund a new film program. It will be on display Saturday at Bonhams New York, 580 Madison Avenue in Manhattan, where the public can see it through April 29. Then, on May 24, it will be presented at the “Bonhams Classic Hollywood: Film and Television” auction in Los Angeles, Bonhams announced this week.
Garland wore several versions of the fragile blue-and-white dress, but only one other – used elsewhere in the film – is known to still exist. Julien’s Auctions sold it in 2012 for $480,000. Bonhams sold the same dress again for nearly $1.6 million in 2015. The auction house also sold the Cowardly Lion costume worn by actor Bert Lahr for more than $3 million the previous year.
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This second dress was accidentally found last year in a shoebox, in a bag, on top of a few letterboxes of the faculty. It was “a legend around the stage department,” Dean Leary-Warsaw said, but no one really knew if the story was true.
The story went that a friend of Garland’s, Mercedes McCambridge, then an actress and artist in residence at the university, gave it to the school’s former head of drama, Father Gilbert Hartke, in 1973.
There were photos of it from that time, but the dress had been “tucked away” in the 1980s and the university had apparently lost track of it, the dean said.
That changed last year when Matt Ripa, teacher and operations manager at the drama school, was cleaning up in preparation for the Hartke Theater remodel and found the bag on top of the mailboxes.
“I opened the bag and in the bag was an old shoe box and in the shoe box I saw the blue and white gingham dress,” Mr Ripa recalled Friday. “And I knew exactly what it was.”
His first reaction? “‘Oh my God!'”
He told a co-worker to grab some latex gloves, and he snapped some photos of the dress, which he said he’d heard of since he was hired in 2014.
“It was one of those tall tales,” he said. “You’ve heard stories from former students and teachers about Father Hartke being given this dress as a gift,” adding, “I’d never seen it before.”
After folding the dress and putting it back in the box, he took it to the campus archivist. They contacted the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to help with authentication, Dean Leary-Warsaw said. She noted that the museum has the famous ruby slippers.
Reading about the find last year, Helen Hall, director of popular culture at Bonhams in Los Angeles, said on Thursday that she was stunned and immediately contacted the university.
“These costumes are exceptionally rare and the collecting community thought all existing dresses were accounted for,” Hall said. “It’s unbelievable that someone is coming to the surface more than 80 years after the film’s release.”
The dress features a fitted bodice, a high neck blouse and a wide skirt, with a fabric label on the inside debossed with “Judy Garland 4223”. Bonhams says the dress is tailored to the scene where Dorothy faces the Wicked Witch of the West in her castle.
In addition to paying for the new film program, the proceeds from the auction will be used to hold a faculty chair in Father Hartke’s name, Dean Leary-Warsaw said.
“We love the dress but it has never been widely shown or shared in the last 50 years and we hope it will be now,” she added. “And maybe this inspires others learning to check their own closets and offices for hidden treasures.”
