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Judy Garland’s hometown hopes a good witch will help purchase Dorothy’s ruby slippers

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Judy Garland’s hometown hopes a good witch will help purchase Dorothy’s ruby slippers

One pair of Dorthy’s slippers, worn by Judy Garland in 1939, are displayed at a viewing at the Plaza Athenee on December 5, 2011 in New York City.

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GRAND RAPIDS, Minn. – This weekend, Grand Rapids, Minnesota will honor its best-known former resident – Judy Garland.

And at its annual Judy Garland Festival, the city will fundraise to bring back a prized prop that the actress made famous. But, it won’t be an easy stroll down the Yellow Brick Road.

Minnesota lawmakers set aside $100,000 this year to help the Judy Garland Museum purchase the coveted ruby slippers of “The Wizard of Oz” fame. Experts expect the shoes could sell for a much higher price.

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“They could sell for $1 million, they could sell for $10 million. They’re priceless,” Joe Maddalena, Heritage Auctions executive vice president, says. “Once they’re gone, all the money in the world can’t buy them back.”

The ruby slippers are one of four sets remaining.

This pair’s unique story

The shoes were on display at Garland’s namesake museum in Grand Rapids in the summer of 2005 when a burglar struck. John Kelsch, the museum director at the time, says a man broke in through the back door and snatched the slippers.

All that was left behind was a single sparkling red sequin.

“It was devastating,” Kelsch says. “Unfortunately, local people thought that the museum benefited somehow from it, that we got the insurance money, which was not the case at all.”

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The Judy Garland Museum now features an exhibit detailing the story of the theft of the ruby slippers and the investigation to find them.

The Judy Garland Museum now features an exhibit detailing the story of the theft of the ruby slippers and the investigation to find them.

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Investigators spent years searching for the missing slippers before they recovered them during a sting operation in Minneapolis in 2018.

Curators at the Smithsonian Museum then compared the shoes to another pair on display in Washington D.C. to ensure they were authentic.

Earlier this year, the slippers were returned to their owner Michael Shaw, who had loaned them to the Grand Rapids museum, during a private ceremony.

Now, the slippers will go on a world tour with stops in Beverly Hills, New York, London and Tokyo before coming up for auction at the end of the year.

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Maddalena, with Heritage Auctions, has sold two other pairs of ruby slippers. He convinced actor Leonardo DiCaprio and a group of the actor’s friends to help purchase one for the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences.

This time, he says the advance notice could help venues like the Judy Garland Museum have a stronger shot.

“We wanted to enable places that might not normally be able to raise the funds so quickly to have plenty of time to think about it,” Maddalena says. “That’d be an amazing story. I mean, if they ended up back there, that’d be a fantastic story.”

The museum, lawmakers and the governor come together

Judy Garland Museum officials, state legislators and Minnesota’s governor say they’re hopeful that a benevolent figure will wave their magic wand to help.

“Our goal is to get the word out to the world that we need them. They belong here,” Kelsch says. “Somebody out there is going to help us. I just know it.”

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In a social media post, Gov. Tim Walz noted the state’s effort to buy “the damn slippers to make sure they remain safe at home in Grand Rapids – on display for all to enjoy – under 24/7, ‘Ocean’s 11’-proof security.”

Judy Garland Museum Director Janie Heitz says Garland had fond memories of her hometown. And it would make sense for the Grand Rapids community to have them on display.

Two people sitting with photo: John Kelsch, left, and Janie Heitz, right, holding a framed photo of a young Judy Garland. They are the former and current directors of the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. They posed for a photo in the actress’ childhood home on May 30.

Two people sitting with photo: John Kelsch, left, and Janie Heitz, right, holding a framed photo of a young Judy Garland. They are the former and current directors of the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. They posed for a photo in the actress’ childhood home on May 30.

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“Yes, we’re the place where they were stolen, and yes, we’ll have to get better security. But you know, Judy Garland is the one that made them famous,” Heitz says.

“We just think it would be a really full circle story on the importance of home and that’s exactly what ‘The Wizard of Oz’ represents,” Heitz says. “She was always trying to get home. And so maybe that’s where the slippers should go, is in Judy’s hometown, where her childhood home is.”

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In the movie, the ruby slippers and a wish got Dorothy back to Kansas.

Heitz is clicking her heels and hoping that her wish – to bring the slippers back to Grand Rapids – comes true, too.

Lifestyle

The Olsen Twins Go to the Beach

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The Olsen Twins Go to the Beach

There was a Cybertruck parked on Main Street in East Hampton, outside the Altuzarra store. It was a Sunday afternoon in June, and traffic stalled for a moment. Even the rich are not immune to rubbernecking a brutalist behemoth.

The monster truck marked the end of an avenue of monograms — the island’s main luxury shopping drag, with $850 raffia handbags and $15,000 decorative surfboards. You know their names: Louis Vuitton, Loewe, Lululemon.

Two and a half miles down this same street, however, quaintness emerged. East Hampton turned into Amagansett, and that flashy boutique strip became a town square with white wood-paneled cottages. There was a shoe store called Brunch, a children’s clothing chain called Pink Chicken, a jewelry and gift shop called Love Adorned. A Cybertruck here would read as a declaration of war.

It was near these cottages that the Row, a brand founded in 2006 by Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen, quietly opened a store on Memorial Day weekend.

Quietly is how the Row tends to operate. Not only in its clothing — often described as “quiet luxury,” a term used to describe very expensive basics — but also in its communication.

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The founders rarely give interviews, advertise or otherwise promote their line. While the Row did announce its Amagansett opening on Instagram, that account is more outwardly devoted to sharing modern art than to moving product. In February, the brand caused a stir at Paris Fashion Week by asking its runway show attendees to “refrain from capturing or sharing any content during your experience” — which is, for many, the primary reason for attending a fashion show. The audience was encouraged to write down thoughts instead.

Somehow this stance works. In an industry overrun by influencers, the Row’s silence is stark. Monasticism is chic. There is an impression of exclusivity and taste, buoyed by the extreme prices. One of the Row’s most popular items, the Margaux bag, ranges in price from $3,490 to $6,810, depending on size and material. It is timeless and ladylike, the kind of purse that might remind Kendall Jenner of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

The Row’s stores also have a reputation for being intimidating at times, even among seasoned high-end shoppers.

One loyal Row customer told me she felt like “peasantry” in the Los Angeles store, which houses an untouchable swimming pool. At the store in Manhattan — a townhouse with a limestone spiral staircase — “there is one guy who works there that all my friends are afraid of, who radiates a very ‘you can’t sit here’ vibe,” said Jess Graves, the writer of a shopping newsletter called The Love List, “even to girls I know who walk in wearing the brand head to toe.”

The Amagansett shop is different. It operates out of a house with roots in the 19th century, formerly occupied by Tiina the Store, the Hamptons’ Gap for billionaires. (Tiina stocked the Row.)

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It has a porch and a screen door and a woven beige carpet. The fitting rooms are harshly lit behind denim patchwork curtains. (By contrast, the spacious wood-floored dressing rooms at the Upper East Side store, where I recently tried on a $1,550 white cotton poplin tent dress that made me look, tragically, like a hospital patient, have soft lighting and softer robes.)

There is no statement artwork in Amagansett, unlike the London store, where an oval light installation by James Turrell greets visitors at the entrance. The vintage furniture is noteworthy — there’s a black chaise shaped like a person from the 1970s by Olivier Mourgue Bouloum and a white painted wooden lounge chair from the 1930s by Robert Mallet-Stevens. But the décor, with its Asian and African influences, is not the point.

The point of the store is the large selection of jewelry, home wares, snacks and skin care by more than 20 brands and artisans that are not the Row. Shampoo from Florence. Beaded necklaces from Greece. A mother-of-pearl caviar set. A bronze lighter carved to resemble tree bark. A packet of dried mango and a jar of raw almonds. Vintage glass candlesticks that can be purchased only in a set of a dozen for $16,000.

There are racks of ready-to-wear clothes made by the Row, of course, the selection tailored to this beach town: bike shorts ($1,050), denim shirts (also $1,050), ribbed tank tops ($670), sleeveless silk maxi-dresses ($1,890). Ms. Graves bought herself a raffia bag here earlier in the season. (“It felt very appropriate while I’m out here this summer,” she said.)

But the Row confirmed that the Amagansett store is its first attempt at a “local” store concept. What this presumably means is a space that is more relaxed, filled with objects that complement the brand’s vision of itself, staffed by sales associates who do not scare people away but warmly help shoppers track down sold-out jelly flats. Not that the Row’s fans are easily scared away: Even those who are intimidated don’t stay away for long, these masochists for cream-colored cashmere.

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In retrospect, the popular jelly shoes, along with the beach towels that models wore as scarves on the Row’s runway in September, may have been a sign that the brand was loosening up — that brightness and humor were coming to this austere world. (Its most recent look book showed a silky camisole dress layered over pants, Y2K-style.)

A British client of the Row visiting the Amagansett store marveled at the vibe shift. Where was the icy indifference? “I don’t think it would fly with the audience here,” she said.

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Sunny Hostin Calls J Lo Flying Commercial a Full 'Jenny From the Block' Move

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Sunny Hostin Calls J Lo Flying Commercial a Full 'Jenny From the Block' Move

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Can't stop the (classical) music : It's Been a Minute

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Can't stop the (classical) music : It's Been a Minute

Johann Sebastian Bach and Nina Simone

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Johann Sebastian Bach and Nina Simone

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It’s Black Music month! This week, Host Brittany Luse invites Howard University professor and trombonist Myles Blakemore to talk about how classical music influenced some of our favorite musicians. They look at how the counterpoint technique of Johann Sebastian Bach may have inspired Nina Simone, and how a love of Genuine can turn into a career in classical music.

Want to be featured on IBAM? Record a voice memo responding to Brittany’s question at the end of the episode and send it to ibam@npr.org.

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This episode was produced by Corey Antonio Rose. It was edited by Jessica Placzek and Sara Sarasohn. Engineering support came from Patrick Murray. We had factchecking help from Ayda Pourrasad. Our executive producer is Veralyn Williams. Our VP of programming is Yolanda Sangweni.

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