One of Judy Garland’s famous dresses from The Wizard Of Oz has sold for more than £1m at auction. It is one of only two complete Dorothy costumes in existence, said Bonhams’ director of entertainment memorabilia, Catherine Williamson.
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The same Oz dress was last sold in 2012 at auction for $490,000, after first having been consigned and sold in 1981 by Kent Warner, an MGM costume designer who assisted with the landmark 1970 MGM studio auction.
Dorothy, living on a Kansas farm in the 1930s, probably never would have imagined her dress traveling to Oz – let alone NY, where decades later it would be valued at over $1 million.
It was initially estimated by the auction house to fetch between $800,000 and $1.2m.
The dress reportedly had sweat stains around the neck – ring around the collar, for TV-watchers of the ’70s – but is otherwise in good condition. In 2014, at Bonham’s, the Cowardly Lion costume from the movie, which was worn by actor Bert Lahr, along with a likeness of Lahr’s face that had been sculpted, went for almost $3.1 million. At least three pairs of the shoes exist, including a pair acquired for an Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences museum and another that’s on display at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.
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The dress was chief highlight in a sale of almost 400 pieces of Hollywood memorabilia organized by the auction house and Turner Classic Movies that netted total sales of more than $4 million.
