Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 80 years, you probably remember the blue-and-white gingham dress that Judy Garland wore in The Wizard of Oz.
You’d imagine that dress would be on display somewhere like the Smithsonian, right? Nope.
It turns out the Adrian-designed costume was found recently in a…and this really does pain me…in a shoe box inside a bag, in a pile of old office clutter, in some musty dusty office, in what I have to believe is some old converted basement, in the drama department (Wow, drama department. Really? I expected more from you.) at the Catholic University of America, in Washington, D.C.
You may be wondering, just as I have, how such a thing could happen.
Well, it turns out that the existence of the Dorothy dress has been the stuff of legend at Catholic University for decades. When it was recently rediscovered b yJaqueline Leary-Warsaw the music, drama and art school dean while cleaning up “office clutter” she was more than a little surprised, but like all true academics she immediately began research.
She found that the dress had been donated to the university in 1973 by actress Mercedes McCambridge, but had been lost and forgotten over the years. She also found out that one just like it sold at auction in 2015 for $1.5 million. So, yeah, the University decided to sell the dress.
Guess who’s getting a new film program?
Now that’s symmetry.
The auction will be held May 24 by Bonhams, so grab your checkbooks! The dress is expected to fetch between $800,000 and $1.2 million.
This article was produced and syndicated by MediaFeed.org.
