The curled-toe "Arabian" ruby slippers on display at the auction of the collection of Debbie Reynolds in Beverly Hills on June 18, 2011 Burnside, Tina; Holland, Oscar (May 18, 2023). "Minnesota man indicted over theft of ruby slippers from 'The Wizard of Oz' ". CNN. One pair, known as "the People's Shoes", is on public display at the Smithsonian Institution. However, the shoes do not belong together; their actual mates are the mismatched pair (left sized 5C, right 5BC) stolen in 2005 and recovered in 2018. [7] [11]

Contemporary Designers Re-Imagine Dorothy's Ruby Slippers For Charity". Access Hollywood. June 10, 2009 . Retrieved April 21, 2010. The Smithsonian team knew about the stolen pair from its research. “It was always one of those things, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be neat if they found the other pair of Ruby Slippers?’ And then when you find out that they did, and you actually get to participate in the recovery and the whole process of returning these iconic items,” says Wallace, the conservator, “was almost like an Indiana Jones moment.” The Ruby Slippers have always been “pretty much the holy grail of all Hollywood memorabilia,” says Thomas, the author. But now, according to Thomas, they are entering “a forensic era,” in which people are examining them more closely than ever before, including the Smithsonian conservators and the FBI. “The Smithsonian has now had the opportunity to look at two pairs side by side,” Thomas says. “That’s the first time any two pairs of the shoes have been together in the same room since Kent Warner brought them home from the MGM lot in 1970.” In "At The Auction of the Ruby Slippers", a short story in Salman Rushdie's 1994 anthology East, West, various members of a destitute world attend an auction to bid for the ruby slippers of Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz, in the hope their transformative powers will help them achieve personal and political ends.It turned out that the stolen pair is the mismatched twin of the Smithsonian pair. But given inconsistencies between the two pairs, Thomas believes the mix-up happened at the time they were made, not after filming, as others have speculated.

I knew we had the work cut out for us,” says Richard Barden, the Preservation Services manager. “When you really start looking at the slippers, you see how many different materials they are. And with each material you have to consider its condition, its physical state, what the materials are made of, how they deteriorate, what environmental factors affect them.” A single sequin contains multiple components that the conservators had to consider: a gelatin core, silver lining, cellulose nitrate coating and dye in the coating. a b c "Dorothy's Ruby Slippers From 'The Wizard Of Oz' For Sale". starpulse.com. September 22, 2011 . Retrieved October 3, 2011. An estimated tens of millions of people have viewed the Ruby Slippers at the American History Museum since an undisclosed donor gave them to the institution in 1979, according to Lintelman. Prior to their recent conservation, the shoes had been away from the public for only short periods. “Any time that we take the Ruby Slippers off display we immediately hear about it from guests,” he says. “When people see them in person they’re so surprised to see that they’re small, but it brings home the fact that Judy Garland was 16 years old when making the film. . . . It’s a very recognizable and understandable object.” I first heard about Ruby Red Shoes when I was wrapping up the 2014 Readings Children’s Book Prize (where its sequel was shortlisted). It certainly looked beautiful, but at the time neither the original or its sequel were easily found in my local bookshops or department stores, so I filed it away in the ‘nice to read it if I ever find it’ part of my mind. This reminded me of so many friends and the way they fill their homes with warmth and beauty. To share this with a child is like sharing an ideal of a warm and cosy home, while reminding them that things we cherish aren’t necessarily the big and expensive.The ruby slippers are a pair of shoes worn by Dorothy Gale as played by Judy Garland in the 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical film The Wizard of Oz. Because of their iconic stature, [1] they are among the most valuable items of film memorabilia. [2] A number of pairs were made for the film, though the exact number is unknown. Five pairs are known to have survived; one pair was stolen from a museum in 2005 and recovered in 2018. [3] [4] For many years, movie studios were careless with old props, costumes, scripts, and other materials, unaware of or indifferent to their increasing value as memorabilia. [17] Often, workers would just keep them as souvenirs without permission, aware that their employers did not particularly care. [17] One of the more notorious of these was costumer Kent Warner, who amassed a large private collection and supplemented his income with sales. It was he who found the slippers in February or March 1970 while helping to set up a mammoth auction of MGM props and wardrobe. [9] They had been stored and forgotten in the basement of MGM's wardrobe department. One pair became the centerpiece of the auction. Warner kept the best pair for himself, size 5B, [14] and apparently sold the rest. [7] An original pair on display at the Smithsonian Institution.

In World of Warcraft, they are a pair of level 70 epic cloth shoes dropped by the Wizard of Oz-themed "opera event" in the Karazhan raid instance. [36] The shoes function similarly to the hearthstone that all characters start out with, allowing them to teleport from their current location to the inn where the hearthstone is set. The caption under the statistic lines is "There's no place like home." During the fall 2008 New York Fashion Week, the Swarovski company held a charity contest to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the film, with nineteen designers redesigning the ruby slippers, including Gwen Stefani, Diane von Fürstenberg, and Moschino. [31] [32] [33] The "Arabian" design was displayed with the designer entries.The slippers are part of the twelve "Foundation Elements" in the 2015 toys-to-life video game LEGO Dimensions. The concept, art, and design of the book all work together well to create a charming introduction to the series. The book is not plot driven, but Ruby’s life is interesting and children who are into details will love pouring over the sweet illustrations. It would be interesting to see if future stories have more of a single-story arc to them. The book would be fine as a lap read for a preschool child and emerging readers would be fine exploring this one their own. The small case size would make the artwork harder to be appreciated in a class or story time setting. The illustrations deserve to be examined up close.