A thief smashed the glass and stole the slippers from their case one night, after breaking in through the museum’s back door. A 2016 documentary,The Slippers, noted that Shaw declined to have the slippers stored in a vault at night, worried about having too many people handling the prized pieces. But he added, “Most importantly, I was assured the museum had security.”
Police said at the time that no alarm sounded from the break-in or theft, and the perpetrator left no fingerprints. The slippers had been insured for $1 million, but their true value,according toCNN last year, lies between $2-$3 million — or upwards of $5 million at auction.
Everett Collection
The museum, for its part, was crushed. “We were literally crying,” cofounder Jon Miner told local CNN affiliate KQDS in 2015.
For over a decade, the slippers remained lost. Then in 2017, the Grand Rapids Police Department got the FBI involved in the case, after a tip came forward that turned into a potential case of extortion. The FBI put its Art Crime team, FBI Laboratory, and Chicago, Miami and Atlanta offices on the case, and eventually got the slippers back from a recovery operation in Minneapolis.
The slippers may have returned, but the work was far from over.
FBI agents in Minneapolis brought the shoes to the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., which has had its own pair from the film on display since 1979. (The museum took its slippers down in April 2017 to do preservation work, before putting them back on display last October.) Dawn Wallace, a conservator at the museum who spent years preserving its own set, compared the recovered slippers to the copy to ensure they were from the movie.
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Another pair currently resides in the ownership of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization responsible for the Oscars. They were bought for $2 million at auction in 2012with help froma group of industry insiders, chieflyLeonardo DiCaprio. At one point, famed costumer Kent Warner owned that pair, before he sold them in 1981. (He may still own another,according to the Smithsonian; yet another pair he sold in 1970 later became the Smithsonian’s pair after the buyer anonymously donated them in 1979.) They’ll go on display when the Academy opens the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, which was originally set for 2017.
An anonymous memorabilia collector owns yet another pair, which hasn’t been seen in public since 2000, according to the Smithsonian. They were bought at auction in 1988, when Roberta Bauman finally sold the shoes, which she had won from MGM Studios in a National Four Star Club contest to name “The 10 Best Films of 1939,” for $165,000. (Bauman, 16 at the time in 1940, got second place.)
Debbie Reynolds also owned a pair for a while: the famed “Arabian test pair,” known for its unique, flamboyant appearance compared to the other, simpler pairs. A designer created the slippers for test shots, butWizard of Ozdirector Victor Fleming eventually opted for the more toned down pairs.According toFootwear News, she bought the shoes for $300 and later sold them for $690,000 in 2011.
Brian To/FilmMagic
“Recovering a cultural item of this importance is significant,” FBI agent Chris Dudley said announcing the return of the shoes. “So many people of all ages around the world have seenThe Wizard of Ozand in that way have some connection to the slippers. That’s one of the things that makes this case resonate with so many.”
source: people.com
