The Afterlife of Glamorous Things
by Suzanne Strempek Shea
FEBRUARY 19, 2009 TAGS:
During Sunday night’s 81st annual Academy Awards ceremony, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button could snag many of the 13 Academy Award for which it’s been nominated. But the film’s enormous success to date already means that its backwards-ticking clock easily could find a new life in a major museum. Slumdog Millionaire is up for an impressive 10 statuettes, but whatever happens, the computer screen on which Jamal Malik considered his answers on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" could swiftly be booked for a world tour.
From the vaults of wealthy collectors to the bottom of movie lot dumpsters, the hereafters for film props depend on the level of fame their stories achieve. Short of a museum of film flops, it would be hard to find even a grain of sand from 1987’s Ishtar enshrined anywhere. But big success means big – and often lasting - interest for wearables, vehicles and décor featured in movies that do make it. Had 1939’s The Wizard of Oz lasted in theaters for no more than the blink of an eye, there’d be no lines today for the Smithsonian Institution’s display of Dorothy’s ruby slippers – or for the collection’s cap, robe, boxing gloves and boxing shoes Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa wore in several of the iconic Rocky pictures.
We line up to view these treasures because they are touchstones from our own stories – a film that helped us through a difficult time or was the first movie we saw with a spouse or starred the most gorgeous man or woman ever to land on the planet – but we also line up because the majority of us can’t afford to add these gems to the sets of our lives. Pay a hefty sum for a mere overnight with them (reserve a suite at the Las Vegas Planet Hollywood, and you can rest your feet on a coffee table holding the glove Ray Liotta used when he portrayed Shoeless Joe Jackson in 1989’s Field of Dreams) – or megabucks for a lifetime of enjoyment.
In 1982, Steven Spielberg paid $60,500 for Rosebud, the mystery of a sled from 1941’s Citizen Kane, intending to hang it above his typewriter as a reminder to create quality work. He set the record for the price to date for a piece of movie memorabilia, and perhaps was lucky it was even in existence: “I thought we burned it,” director and star Orson Welles was to have said at the time.
Price tags for such items since have only soared. The Smithsonian’s ruby slippers were a mere $15,000 in 1970, but because multiple pairs were created for the movie, the auction house Christie’s was able to purchase a pair in 1988, for $165,000, and a dozen years later found them a home with a memorabilia dealer – for $666,000.
Competition can be fierce. Donald Trump tried but lost out when bidding in 1988 for the upright piano from the Paris flashback in the 1942 classic Casablanca. An unnamed Japanese trading company purchased the 58-key piano at a Sotheby’s auction, for $154,000.
Auction houses often feature such props, and are the places where many private collectors scoop them up - and often away from the public eye.
In 1995, the Fiberglass tablets on which Charlton Heston’s Moses received the Ten Commandments in the eponymous 1956 film were auctioned for $81,700. In 2005, the high bidder for James Bonds’ Goldfinger and Thunderball Aston Martin DB5, complete with the pair of .30-caliber machine guns that emerge from the headlights, paid $275,000.
At a Christie’s auction in 1994, the most famous prop from the 1941 film The Maltese Falcon sold for $398,000 to Ronald Winston of Harry Winston jewelers. As was the case with Dorothy Gale’s ruby slippers, several falcons were used in the film – in this case because star Humphrey Bogart had dropped the original 11-and-a-half-inch-tall statue during shooting. Its tail feathers now famously dented, the original is on display at the Warner Brothers' movie museum in Burbank, California. See it, and a collection that includes James Dean’s Triumph 500, hats from My Fair Lady, and a saddle and chaps used by John Wayne, as part of the Warner Bros. VIP Studio tour, for a reasonable $39 per person.
But if you do crave a famous movie memento of your very own, bargains can be found.
"Rustic lakeshore cabin used in filming the famous ‘woodchipper’ scene from movie Fargo," began the Ebay ad spotted by Wisconsin resident Elise Martin.
Indeed, the 18-by-36-foot building was the hideout for the 1996 Coen Brothers film's pair of inept kidnappers, and just outside its windows is the site where the partnership so famously ended when Steve Buscemi's clueless character Carl Showalter was axed to death before being shoved into a woodchipper.
Martin currently is renovating the building she purchased online for $10,000 back in 2002. Though somewhat a fan of the film that garnered seven Academy Award nominations and won two (she finds the movie fascinating but is put off by its profanity), she bid mostly because she already owned land. In keeping with the ad's requirements, she had the cottage moved from its spot near Wisconsin's Square Lake, and chose to settle it 150 miles away, in the town of Barnes. After the initial deal, Martin invested another $50,000 in the cottage, and is in the process of more renovations - though she won't be touching much of the kitchen, including the stove the characters sat near when plotting murder.
“No,” Martin recently told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, “the cabin did not come with the woodchipper.”
But if Martin ever wants, the real thing is sure to surface one day, in museum or on auction block, ready to bask in the glow of its own post-movie life. Now that’s a real Hollywood ending.
CLICK HERE to see a clip of the Fargo wood chipper scene. Be warned, it is disturbing
From the vaults of wealthy collectors to the bottom of movie lot dumpsters, the hereafters for film props depend on the level of fame their stories achieve. Short of a museum of film flops, it would be hard to find even a grain of sand from 1987’s Ishtar enshrined anywhere. But big success means big – and often lasting - interest for wearables, vehicles and décor featured in movies that do make it. Had 1939’s The Wizard of Oz lasted in theaters for no more than the blink of an eye, there’d be no lines today for the Smithsonian Institution’s display of Dorothy’s ruby slippers – or for the collection’s cap, robe, boxing gloves and boxing shoes Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa wore in several of the iconic Rocky pictures.We line up to view these treasures because they are touchstones from our own stories – a film that helped us through a difficult time or was the first movie we saw with a spouse or starred the most gorgeous man or woman ever to land on the planet – but we also line up because the majority of us can’t afford to add these gems to the sets of our lives. Pay a hefty sum for a mere overnight with them (reserve a suite at the Las Vegas Planet Hollywood, and you can rest your feet on a coffee table holding the glove Ray Liotta used when he portrayed Shoeless Joe Jackson in 1989’s Field of Dreams) – or megabucks for a lifetime of enjoyment.
In 1982, Steven Spielberg paid $60,500 for Rosebud, the mystery of a sled from 1941’s Citizen Kane, intending to hang it above his typewriter as a reminder to create quality work. He set the record for the price to date for a piece of movie memorabilia, and perhaps was lucky it was even in existence: “I thought we burned it,” director and star Orson Welles was to have said at the time.
Price tags for such items since have only soared. The Smithsonian’s ruby slippers were a mere $15,000 in 1970, but because multiple pairs were created for the movie, the auction house Christie’s was able to purchase a pair in 1988, for $165,000, and a dozen years later found them a home with a memorabilia dealer – for $666,000.
Competition can be fierce. Donald Trump tried but lost out when bidding in 1988 for the upright piano from the Paris flashback in the 1942 classic Casablanca. An unnamed Japanese trading company purchased the 58-key piano at a Sotheby’s auction, for $154,000.
Auction houses often feature such props, and are the places where many private collectors scoop them up - and often away from the public eye.
In 1995, the Fiberglass tablets on which Charlton Heston’s Moses received the Ten Commandments in the eponymous 1956 film were auctioned for $81,700. In 2005, the high bidder for James Bonds’ Goldfinger and Thunderball Aston Martin DB5, complete with the pair of .30-caliber machine guns that emerge from the headlights, paid $275,000.
At a Christie’s auction in 1994, the most famous prop from the 1941 film The Maltese Falcon sold for $398,000 to Ronald Winston of Harry Winston jewelers. As was the case with Dorothy Gale’s ruby slippers, several falcons were used in the film – in this case because star Humphrey Bogart had dropped the original 11-and-a-half-inch-tall statue during shooting. Its tail feathers now famously dented, the original is on display at the Warner Brothers' movie museum in Burbank, California. See it, and a collection that includes James Dean’s Triumph 500, hats from My Fair Lady, and a saddle and chaps used by John Wayne, as part of the Warner Bros. VIP Studio tour, for a reasonable $39 per person.But if you do crave a famous movie memento of your very own, bargains can be found.
"Rustic lakeshore cabin used in filming the famous ‘woodchipper’ scene from movie Fargo," began the Ebay ad spotted by Wisconsin resident Elise Martin.
Indeed, the 18-by-36-foot building was the hideout for the 1996 Coen Brothers film's pair of inept kidnappers, and just outside its windows is the site where the partnership so famously ended when Steve Buscemi's clueless character Carl Showalter was axed to death before being shoved into a woodchipper.
Martin currently is renovating the building she purchased online for $10,000 back in 2002. Though somewhat a fan of the film that garnered seven Academy Award nominations and won two (she finds the movie fascinating but is put off by its profanity), she bid mostly because she already owned land. In keeping with the ad's requirements, she had the cottage moved from its spot near Wisconsin's Square Lake, and chose to settle it 150 miles away, in the town of Barnes. After the initial deal, Martin invested another $50,000 in the cottage, and is in the process of more renovations - though she won't be touching much of the kitchen, including the stove the characters sat near when plotting murder.
“No,” Martin recently told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, “the cabin did not come with the woodchipper.”
But if Martin ever wants, the real thing is sure to surface one day, in museum or on auction block, ready to bask in the glow of its own post-movie life. Now that’s a real Hollywood ending.
CLICK HERE to see a clip of the Fargo wood chipper scene. Be warned, it is disturbing
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