DALLAS — Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers sold Saturday, December 7, at Heritage Auctions for a price somewhere over the rainbow, way up high: $32.5 million. One of four surviving pairs worn by Judy Garland in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, the slippers that sold December 7, are now the most famous — and, by far, the most valuable movie memorabilia ever sold at auction.

That single pair of shoes also helped Heritage’s December 7 Hollywood/Entertainment Signature Auction set the record for an entertainment auction: $38,615,188. That shatters the $22.8 million realized during the 2011 Debbie Reynolds auction held by Heritage Auctions.

Live bidding for the Ruby Slippers opened at $1.55 million. Several minutes later, as bidding hit million-dollar increments, the slippers hit their final price, and the auction room erupted with applause. The pre-auction estimate for the slippers was $3 million and up. They surpassed that within seconds.
No other pair had ever come close to that final number.

One pair of Ruby Slippers sold at auction in 2000 for $666,000. A dozen years later, Steven Spielberg and Leonardo DiCaprio spent $2 million on the pair donated to the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. For information, www.ha.com or 214-528-3500.