Posted on 07/12/2021 6:28:50 PM PDT by nickcarraway
A lecturer at Catholic University discovered the rare costume wrapped in a trash bag in a drama department office Four people, a scarecrow, Tin Man, Dorothy and a lion, walk arm in arm down a yellow brick road A publicity still from The Wizard of Oz. A lecturer at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. recently stumbled onto one of the costumes worn by Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale in the 1939 film. (Silver Screen Collection / Getty Images) By Nora McGreevy SMITHSONIANMAG.COM JULY 12, 2021 9:58AM 45 For decades, members of the Catholic University of America (CUA) drama department traded rumors about the location of a long-lost piece of movie magic: a blue-and-white checked gingham dress worn by Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale in the iconic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. Donated to the Washington, D.C.-based university in the 1970s, the dress hadn’t been seen in years—and even department lecturer and operations coordinator Matt Ripa, who had searched high and low for the costume, had come up empty-handed.
Sometimes, though, dreams really do come true. On June 7, Ripa was cleaning out a building ahead of renovations when he found a mysterious trash bag tucked on top of the faculty mail slots.
“I was curious what was inside and opened the trash bag and inside was a shoebox and inside the shoebox was the dress!!” he recalls in a University Archives blog post. “I couldn’t believe it.”
Speaking with the Washington Post’s Paul Duggan, Ripa adds, “I was shocked, holding a piece of Hollywood history right in my hands.”
The box contained a brief message from Thomas Donahue, a now-retired drama professor who had apparently discovered the dress in the department chair’s office: “I found this.” Thrilled, Ripa and a co-worker donned gloves to snap a few photos of the faded garment before heading over to the archives.
Curators photographed Dorothy’s Wizard of Oz dress in June 2021. Garland’s name is handwritten on the inside of the dress. (Shane MacDonald and Maria Mazzenga / Catholic University of America) Scholars with the university’s special collections then contacted Ryan Lintelman, a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (NMAH) and an expert in Wizard of Oz memorabilia. The museum houses a pair of sparkling ruby slippers worn by Garland in its collections, as well as a complete costume worn by Ray Bolger as the brainless Scarecrow and an original 1938 screenplay based on L. Frank Baum’s 1900 book.
Per Institution policy, Smithsonian curators do not offer monetary evaluations of historical objects. But as Lintelman tells Smithsonian magazine, he and conservators Dawn Wallace and Sunae Park Evans determined that the CUA dress numbers among just six known costumes “that have a good claim” on being the real deal.
Lintelman notes that the iconic blue-and-white “dress” was actually composed of two pieces: “a thin cotton blouse with bunched sleeves and blue ric-rac tape trim at its collar” and a “blue and white checked gingham pinafore dress worn over top.”
This simple outfit eventually became one of the most famous ensembles in cinematic history. When a tornado transports Dorothy from sepia-toned Kansas to the magical land of Oz, the heroine’s blue pinafore pops against the film’s Technicolor hues: a yellow brick road, the Emerald City and her beloved ruby slippers, to name a few. According to Hilary Whiteman of CNN Style, the “sensory overload” of Oz’s bright colors was meant to convey its otherworldliness—in other words, the sense that Dorothy wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
For Garland, life as Dorothy was hard work. After long days of sweating and dancing on set, the teenaged actress often ripped the thin dress material where the pinafore straps met the shoulders. Like other costumes she wore on set, the CUA dress is highly worn at the shoulders and bears evidence of small mends from seamstresses. (MGM employed teams of costumers on set and often pushed actors to shoot films on a fast-paced, “factory-like” production schedule, Lintelman notes.)
The newly resurfaced dress features a characteristic “secret pocket” where Garland stored her handkerchief; the actress’ name is also written on the garment in the same handwriting that appears on other known costumes.
Wrapped up in the garment, too, is a sad history of abuse. Later in life, Garland would allege that male studio executives, fellow actors and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Studios founder Louis B. Mayer sexually harassed her while she was on set. MGM managers also forced young Garland to take addictive drugs and starve herself to lose weight—actions that contributed to the addictions and disordered eating habits that plagued the actress for the rest of her life, as Suyin Haynes wrote for Time magazine in 2019.
Oscar-winning actress Mercedes McCambridge donated the dress to her close friend, CUA drama department director Father Gilbert Hartke, when she was an artist-in-residence at the school in the early 1970s. An article from student newspaper the Tower describes a 1973 speech in which McCambridge referred to Garland’s addictions and noted that she hoped the dress could be a source of “hope, strength and courage” for students.
Actress Mercedes McCambridge gave Father Gilbert Hartke one of the dresses worn by Garland in The Wizard of Oz when she was an artist in residence at Catholic University in the early 1970s. Though rumors of the dress have swirled for decades, the dress was only recently located. (Special Collections, The Catholic University of America) Subsequent news articles and photos of Father Hartke holding the dress seem to back up this timeline, says Maria Mazzenga, curator of the American Catholic History Collections at CUA, in a statement.
“[T]he circumstantial evidence [pointing to the costume’s authenticity] is strong,” she adds.
Four years before McCambridge donated the dress, Garland died of an accidental drug overdose at age 47. The university has not determined how McCambridge and Garland knew each other, but the statement notes that they were contemporaries who “were believed to be friends.”
Five other dresses worn by Garland during filming now reside in private hands, says Lintelman. Eventually, CUA curators hope to officially authenticate the rediscovered garment and display it publicly on campus, reports Jacqueline Jedrych for the Tower.
Smithsonian conservators, including Wallace, recently spent two years painstakingly cleaning the pair of sequined ruby slippers in NMAH’s collections. (Though Baum originally described Dorothy’s shoes as silver, movie producers decided to make her footwear red so they would stand out, per the museum.)
“It would be wonderful to discuss reuniting the museum’s ruby slippers with the dress someday for fans of the film to enjoy,” Lintelman says.
The iconic shoes—and the person who wore them—have since had a profound impact on American life.
“Dorothy’s ruby slippers have held great meaning for people ever since 1939,” adds Lintelman, “whether inspiring young women to pursue their dreams, galvanizing community for gay men who identified as ‘friends of Dorothy’ in the 1970s, sparking opportunities for more representative cinema with films like The Wiz, or even just seeding happy memories for so many Americans.”
BARF. I USED to have happy memories, but they were just dashed to pieces.
Bill Clinton was heard to say “I know nothing about that dress.”
I loved The Wizard of Oz as a child and still do. Have a DVD I play every year.
Well....they’ve always been after the kids.
I have an unedited version of Blazing Saddles I play every so often, when I feel like being an equal opportunity offender and dump on everyone.
Wonder if they’d find munchkin DNA on it?
Nice!!!
I would love to have the original pattern for that dress....to sew, for my grands.
BWAHAHAHA!
I remember my parents turning it on back when I was around 6. Too creepy. Ugly monkeys and the Munchkins song was weird. Still can’t watch it.
If the dress was missing for almost 50 years, they clean as often as I do.
BFD!!
Get that over to the White House so Biden can get a whiff and sniff, sniff, sniff.
Aaaaahhhhhhh.
The sniffer has the sniffernatural energy for another day./ s LOL
1st Sunday in May is our traditional family occasion for viewing. Over the years I have become especially impressed with Bert Lahr’s timeless performance.
That be some funny sh^t, right there.
Lahr was always amazing. I had tickets to see him in a Broadway show, but stage workers went on strike that night. @$@$@#
What possessed you to link to this sick trash?
Ohhhh, so sad. Guess you should have stayed in Kansas. :)
Same reason a dog licks his balls- because he can.
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