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50 Year Old "Wizard Of Oz" Dress Not Auctioned As It Holds Complicated History

Primarily a Gone With the Wind Victor Fleming's direction, the film starred Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Billie Burke and Margaret Hamilton.

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Chokita Paul
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Wizard Of Oz Dress, Wizard Of Oz, Bonham Auction,
American actor and singer, Judy Garland's gingham dress from her 1939 film The Wizard Of Oz did not go up for auction on Tuesday. Reportedly, a judge blocked the sale of the garment. 
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Presumed to be lost for about 50 years, drama lecturer from Washington DC's Catholic University, Matt Ripa found the dress inside a shoebox during the university's renovation. The auctioneers estimated that Dorothy's checkered dress would fetch around 1.2 million dollars at Los Angeles' Bonham auction.

Wizard Of Oz Dress

New York-based US District Judge, Paul Gardephe stopped the sale of the dress after a relative of a Catholic priest filed a lawsuit claiming that the dress belonged to her. According to the lawsuit, Catholic University's head of the drama department, the late Rev. Gilbert Hartke got the dress from Academy award-winning American actor, Mercedes McCambridge in the 1970s. Gilbert's photographs posed as evidence of this statement.


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After retiring in 1986, Gilbert left the costume to his successors heading the drama department at the University. The Bonham auction asserted that the dress was one of the four "blue-and-white" dresses from the film.

"The university has no ownership interest in the dress as there is no documentation demonstrating decedent ever formally or informally donated the dress to Catholic University," said Gilbert Hartke's niece, Barbara Ann Hartke, in a lawsuit filed against the auctioneer.

Produced by Metro Golden Mayer, The Wizard Of Oz is a 1939 American musical fantasy ">film and an adaptation of American author L Frank Baum's 1900 children's fantasy novel, The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz. Primarily a Gone With the Wind Victor Fleming's direction, the film starred Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Billie Burke and Margaret Hamilton.

Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay. Herbert Stothart composed the musical score and incidental music for the film. The film was also one of the few films on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register.

The Wizard Of Oz
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