Lost for decades, Dorothy’s dress from ‘Oz’ up for sale | Entertainment

For decades, 1 of the variations of the costume Garland wore in the motion picture was assumed misplaced at Catholic College of The united states, exactly where it had been supplied to a person in the drama division in the early 1970s. But the clearing out of some business clutter previous calendar year led to the discovering of the gown in an previous shoebox, and now it really is headed for the auction block.

When she very first noticed it, “all I could consider about was viewing the film when I was a baby and developing up with” it, reported Jacqueline Leary-Warsaw, dean of the school of tunes, drama and artwork at Catholic University, in Washington, D.C. “In a way it was like I was on the lookout at my past childhood.”

She and other people are hopeful that nostalgia component will occur into play when the costume goes up for sale at Bonhams “Classic Hollywood: Movie and Television” auction on Could 24 in Los Angeles, in which it has a presale estimate of $800,000 to $1.2 million. Bonhams has the gown on display screen this 7 days at the auction house’s New York area prior to it is sent to California for public watch and then auction.

Helen Hall, director of popular lifestyle for Bonhams, explained that the marketplace for memorabilia, and movie costumes in individual, is strong, and that “The Wizard of Oz” is a cultural touchstone.

Persons “very a lot remember the initially time they noticed the film, the effect it experienced on their life,” she explained. The movie is renowned for its music, its dialogue and its visuals, especially when Dorothy goes from drab, sepia-coloured Kansas to gloriously multicolored Oz.

There was far more than 1 of the costume designed for Garland while filming. Corridor claimed that 4 are known to exist and that only two, together with the a single observed at Catholic University, are with the blouse she wore beneath. Bonhams marketed the other one with a blouse at an auction in 2015 for far more than $1.5 million.

(There are also some surviving pairs of the ruby slippers Garland wore, with one particular pair in the assortment at the Smithsonian.)

The rediscovered dress experienced to begin with been presented to Father Gilbert Hartke, who was then head of the university’s drama division, in 1973 by actress Mercedes McCambridge, Leary-Warsaw mentioned, even though it’s not distinct how McCambridge came to have it.

Someway, in the yrs that followed, the department misplaced track of the costume until it grew to become “something that men and women experienced thought was just a fantasy,” she mentioned. Previous yr, in the course of preparations for a renovation, a bag containing the shoebox was opened, and there it was — while how it obtained to exactly where it finished up continues to be a secret, Leary-Warsaw reported.

The costume was in excellent condition, aside from a piece that experienced been reduce absent, whilst the shirt was a lot more fragile.

In researching the dress, it was determined that Garland wore it in the movie in the scene in which she is confronted in a castle by a threatening Wicked Witch of the West.

The school made a decision to auction it off as an alternative of maintaining it, and options to use the proceeds from the auction sale to produce a complete-fledged film plan.