Stolen ‘Wizard of Oz’ ruby slippers will go on an international tour and then be auctioned
A pair of ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz” were returned to their owner, nearly two decades after the iconic shoes were stolen from a museum in the late actor’s hometown. But “No Place Like Home?” Not exactly.
The memorabilia collector who owns the iconic shoes immediately turned them over to an auction company, which plans to take them on an international tour before offering them at auction in December, an official with Dallas-based Heritage Auctions said Monday.
The ruby slippers were at the heart of the beloved 1939 musical. Garland’s character, Dorothy, danced down the Yellow Brick Road in her shiny shoes, accompanied by the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion. To return to Kansas, she had to click her heels three times and repeat, “There’s no place like home.”
In reality, Garland wore several pairs during filming. There are only four left.
Memorabilia collector Michael Shaw’s ruby slippers were believed to be of the highest quality; they were used in close-ups of Dorothy clicking her heels. Shaw loaned them to the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, in 2005.
That summer, someone smashed a display case and stole the slippers covered in sequins and beads. Their whereabouts remained a mystery until the FBI recovered them in 2018.
The slippers were returned to Shaw in a ceremony in February, but details were not announced until Monday.
“It’s like seeing an old friend that I haven’t seen in years,” Shaw said in a press release.
The Dallas-based auction company said the slippers tour will include stops in Los Angeles, New York, London and Tokyo. Dates were not announced.
“You cannot overstate the importance of Dorothy’s ruby slippers: they are the most important prop in Hollywood history,” Joe Maddalena, Executive Vice President of Heritage Auctions, said in the press release.
The man who stole the slippers, Terry Jon Martin, 76, pleaded guilty in October to theft of a large work of art. He admitted using a hammer to smash the glass of the museum door and display case, which his lawyer said was an attempt to pull out the slippers. of “one last score” after turning away from a life of crime. He was sentenced to prison in January due to his poor health.
An indictment made public Sunday revealed that a second man, 76-year-old Jerry Hal Saliterman, has been charged with theft of a major work of art and witness tampering. He did not enter a plea when he made his first appearance in U.S. District Court in St. Paul on Friday, sitting in a wheelchair and receiving supplemental oxygen.
The indictment states that from August 2005 to July 2018, Saliterman “received, concealed and discarded an item of cultural heritage” — specifically “an authentic pair of ‘ruby slippers’ worn by Judy Garland in the film ‘The Wizard of Oz’ dated 1939. .'” The indictment says Saliterman knew they were stolen. It also says that, sometime last year, he threatened to release a sex tape of a woman and “take her with him” if she didn’t keep quiet about the crime…
Saliterman’s attorney, John Brink, declined to discuss the case in depth Friday but said his client is not guilty.
“He didn’t do anything wrong,” Brink said.
Court documents do not indicate how Martin and Saliterman may have been connected.
Martin said at a hearing in October that he had hoped to extract what he believed to be genuine rubies from the shoes and sell them. But someone dealing in stolen goods told him the rubies weren’t real, Martin said. So he took off the slippers.
Attorney Dane DeKrey wrote in a court document that Martin had no idea of the cultural significance of the ruby slippers and that he had never seen “The Wizard of Oz.”
The FBI said a man approached the insurer in 2017, claiming he could help get them back, but demanded more than the $200,000 reward that was offered. The slippers were recovered the following year during an FBI sting in Minneapolis. Federal prosecutors estimate the market value of the slippers at about $3.5 million.
The other pairs of slippers are owned by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of American History and a private collector.
Garland was born Frances Gumm in 1922. She lived in Grand Rapids until she was four, when her family moved to Los Angeles. She died in 1969. The Judy Garland Museum, which includes the house where she lived, claims to have the largest collection of Garland and “Wizard of Oz” memorabilia in the world.