A pair of the iconic ruby slippers worn by Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz” will soon be embarking on an improbable global exhibition tour following their own yellow break road to Los Angeles, New York, London, and Tokyo. (Stay tuned for dates, Ozzies). The tour follows the unexpected return of the iconic shoes to their owner, nearly 20 years after they were stolen from a museum in the late actor’s hometown.
The memorabilia collector who owns the famous footwear immediately turned them over to an auction company, which plans to take them on the international tour before offering them at auction in December.
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, joined by the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion. To return home to Kansas, she had to click the heels three times and repeat, “There’s no place like home.”
In reality, Garland wore several pairs during filming. Only four remain.
Memorabilia collector Michael Shaw’s ruby slippers were believed to be the highest quality of all of them – they were the ones used in close-ups of Dorothy clicking her heels. Shaw loaned them in 2005 to the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.
That summer, someone smashed through a display case and stole the sequins-and-beads-bedazzled slippers. Their whereabouts remained a mystery until the FBI recovered them in 2018.
The slippers were returned to Shaw in a ceremony in February.
“It’s like welcoming back an old friend I haven’t seen in years,” Shaw said in a news release.
“You cannot overstate the importance of Dorothy’s ruby slippers: They are the most important prop in Hollywood history,” Heritage Auctions Executive VP Joe Maddalena said in the news release.
The man who stole the slippers, Terry Jon Martin, 76, pleaded guilty in October to theft of a major artwork, admitting to using a hammer to smash the glass of the museum’s door and display case in what his attorney said was an attempt to pull off “one last score” after turning away from a life of crime. He was sentenced in January to time served because of his poor health.
The other pairs of slippers are held by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Smithsonian Museum of American History, and a private collector.
The slippers are among the most popular artifacts at the Smithsonian.
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, says it has the world’s largest collection of Garland and “Wizard of Oz” memorabilia.