

“The ruby slippers are among the most requested objects when visitors come to the museum,” says Ryan Lintelman, curator for entertainment at the museum. Eighty years on, they’ve achieved a hallowed status few costume pieces could hope to attain - a status that has been enshrined (and even heightened) by displaying a mismatched pair of the slippers at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. They’ve become practically synonymous with Hollywood itself: an emblem of the imagination, magic, and allure of entertainment and moviemaking. The first thing that pops into your mind when you hear those words is probably the ruby slippers - the sparkling shoes that whisk Judy Garland’s Dorothy Gale back home to Kansas after her fantastic adventures in The Wizard of Oz.īut the ruby slippers are so much more than a plot device in a beloved film. In recordings of the news conference, they glistened as the sound of camera shutters filled the room.“Close your eyes, and tap your heels together three times, and think to yourself, ‘There’s no place like home…’” “Now, under the rainbow,” she said as she lifted the velvet cloth concealing the slippers, stored behind a glass case. But she said the development was an “important milestone,” and the slippers are a piece of treasure to the public. It was atypical for investigators to give the public even a view of the slippers with an active investigation still ongoing, FBI special agent Jill Sanborn told reporters that day. They did say that they found the slippers via an attempted extortion plot - but who was attempting to commit it, they didn’t say. , to reveal the recovered slippers to the media and American public, they were vague on details, with it still being an active investigation. The museum assisted authorities in authenticating the recovered pair.Ĭalled a news conference on Sept. Using one of the alternate pairs used for filming, now housed at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, (Bria Barton | Bemidji Pioneer)īut it was that consequential lead received in 2018 that led the police department and the FBI out of Minnesota to investigate and eventually find the treasure. Although the shoes were found last year, authorities have yet to reveal a suspect. The theft made international headlines and put the small Minnesota town on the map. In 2005, a pair of the original Ruby Slippers from "The Wizard of Oz" film was stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minn.

The 10th anniversary of the theft came and went in 2015 - along with a $1 million reward for anyone who unearthed the famed shoes. Major news outlets have swarmed to cover the story, and there's even an eight-partīut the years ticked by with no sign of the slippers. The theft drew national attention and news coverage, with spectators from far-flung places desperate to see the slippers returned home. In August 2005, a burglar snatched the pair of ruby slippers that Garland wore as Dorothy during the filming of 1939's "The Wizard of Oz." There are only four sparkly pairs from the set left in existence, and the stolen pair was housed at the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, located where Garland herself lived as a child. Grand Rapids also was home to one of the most notorious thefts in recent memory - and it happened right where Garland grew up.
WIZARD OF OZ RED SLIPPERS MOVIE
PAUL - Situated among the dense woods of northern Minnesota, Grand Rapids is a small town of about 11,000, most famous for being the birthplace of beloved movie star Judy Garland.
