"They're gone! The ruby slippers. What have you done with them?"
~ The Wicked Witch of the West - The Wizard of Oz (1939)
The Story:
In one of those bizarre twists of reality mirroring art, this week's story is about the disappearance of one of cinema's most iconic props: the ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz.
Note that when I say "one of," it has a double meaning. You see, there was more than one pair of those slippers, at least five that is known of, and there has been a lot of lore surrounding the fate of the many pairs of ruby slippers. Since studios had not started keeping a tight rein on costumes until the '70s, many of the pairs had been sold to collectors or given away to well-connected persons over the years; some were auctioned. One particular pair ended up on loan from a collector in a Minnesota museum...and that's where things got really weird.
One night in late August 2005, shortly before the infamous shoes were to go back to the collector, someone broke into the museum and stole the ruby slippers. They have never been found.
Even stranger, the stories that have surrounded this theft could be ripped right out of a conspiracy movie. The theft happened on a night when the alarm and video cameras weren't working, pointing to a possible inside job. At one point, authorities believed they had found the slippers, only to discover later that they were replicas. The insurance company paid out $1 million to the collector, and then offered a reward to anyone able to locate and return the pair. Even the circumstances surrounding the theft were drama-worthy: "They took nothing else and left behind no fingerprints or clues—only a trail of broken glass from the door to the case and a single red sequin." (Source)
It's been more than a decade since the theft and the ruby slippers remain at large. What happened to them? Did they get taken back to Oz? We may never know.
Title: The Wizard of Oz
Based on: Frank L. Baum's book of the same name
Released: August 25, 1939
Genre: Fantasy
Directors: Victor Fleming, King Vidor, Mervyn LeRoy, George Cukor, Norman Taurog
Writer: Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, Edgar Allan Woolf
Music: Harold Arlen, Herbert Stothart
Actors/Actresses: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Billie Burke, Margaret Hamilton
What kinds of Behind the Lines stories would you like to hear? Comment below!
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