October 9, 2025 • 40 mins
There are few pieces of film history more iconic than Dorothy's magic ruby slippers from 1939's The Wizard of Oz. Yet, at first, the studio had no idea how valuable these would become. The multiple pairs of slippers languished in obscurity until costume department worker named Kent Warner launched a mission to save them. Yet the story doesn't stop there: as Ben, Noel and Max learn in today's episode, one of history's dumbest mobsters actually stole the shoes... because he mistakenly believed they were covered in actual rubies.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Shout out to Las Vegas is
the Sphere. Shout out to our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Max, There's no place like home. There's no place like home, Williams.
There we go.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Love it. That's mister Noel Brown, returned from some adventures.
They call me Ben Bullen in this part of the
world due to some ongoing litigation. Look, once upon a time,
as our pal Jordan told us, Uh, the Wizard of
Oz was a big deal. Did you ever read the
old books by there was a book?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, no, I did.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
I am aware of the book, and apparently in the
book the slippers are silver, But that did I wouldn't
have translated to the silver screen as well as read
for some reason and the infinite wisdom of the pictures
and the golden age of Hollywood. Yeah, no, I do
love the story. You know if the Frank Albaum series
(01:29):
of books, which also I believe encompassed a lot of
the lore that went into the utterly terrifying children's film
Returned to Oz. Yes, like Queen Momby And there's some
ruby slippers in that one too, by the Gnome King
and the.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Most unfriendly rollerbladers in.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
The Wheeler History nightmare stuff my friends.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Ah, yes, yeah, that's one of those things that will
encourage the Mandela effect because you're wondering whether or not
that actually happened or if you just had a traumatic
childhood fever dream.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
In the film Young Ferusa Bulk, you may remember from
the Craft, I'm still terrified to other things. Yeah, for sure,
she's great in the Craft, and she's also an American
History X when she was a kid, and she's in
this film and her character has I believe, been committed
to a psychiatric institute and is given like shock treatment
(02:22):
and that's what leads her to re hallucinate Oz kind
of and it's boy, is it ever dark?
Speaker 1 (02:29):
And I wonder what I wonder what Frank would think
about that, what the author Baum would think.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Anyway, here's a Disney picture by the way.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Right, Yeah, yeah, a lot of stuff got co signed
by Disney.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
This was a golden era for Mega Mega Dark Live
Action Disney. This is the I want to say, early nineties.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
People were going through stuff, you know, Alison Shean's was big.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
It was a whole thing, all right.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Here's our story for today, courtesy of our phenomenal research
associate friend of the show, Jordan run Talk. In the
story Wizard of Oz, the film adaptation, our protagonist Dorothy
Gale Tornado jokes true, she has gifted a pair of
(03:23):
magic ruby slippers, and these are actual artifacts because the
MGM studio, their prop department did, of course have to
make actual ruby slippers. These have become one of the
most coveted bobbles in movie history.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Pieces of movie memorabilia.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
And we're going to get to some great info Jordan
found about how like at the time, movie memorabilia was
not a thing, the studios didn't know what they had.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
I guess they just didn't have.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
A long view of it all, and this kind of
kind of popped up as a cottage industry that then,
of course became incredibly lucrative.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
They were still using as best This is snow exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Oh totally.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Yeah, there's a lot of a lot that's maybe another episode,
because there's a lot of crazy behind the scenes stuff
involving the production of the Wizard of Oz.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Ben Mins. I imagine as you mentioned the sphere in
Las Vegas.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
You're aware of this bizarre sort of event experience. I
guess where they've reimagined The Wizard of Oz film through
enhancements using AI and machine learning in order to widen
the frame of this classic Golden Age Hollywood film to
encompass the entire three hundred and sixty degrees of the
(04:41):
Vegas sphere. There's also live action elements where the flying
monkeys swoop in on like you know, like what do
you call it? Wires and you know, hurricane wind effects
and all that. Very four D cinema at its arguably,
I don't know, kind of most gross. It's not my thing.
Maybe if it's free you by all means up you
enjoy yourself. But general, you little odd, little odd, that's
(05:05):
a general you ridiculous historians. This fear has fascinated all
three of us and hopefully you as well since its construction.
Check out our pals. I was hanging with Jack and
Miles talking about this earlier. I can't remember when, but
it is.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
You know, the best way to do it, since we
want to save some time here, is to go to
the New York Times article from September one, twenty twenty
five by Alyssa Wilkinson, and I love the title here,
nol it is. It is film criticism, and the headline reads,
is the Wizard of oz a Sphere the future of cinema?
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Or the end of it? That is the question.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
I mean, you know, it's sort of part and parcel
of the kinds of conversations that folks have around let's
say George Lucas reimagining his previous films and making the
original versions no longer able to be seen or acquired,
And then the question then becomes like, is there any
end to this kind of revisionist history of like classic cinema?
(06:11):
And I would argue this is maybe not at the end.
I don't want to be dire about it, but it
just kind of rubs me the wrong way. So we
are talking more specifically about the original creation of this
incredible piece of Hollywood history and some of the props
and the screen used pieces that kind of developed a
life of their own in terms of like Hollywood lore.
(06:33):
And there's a really really cool story surrounding these ruby slippers.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Yes, in two thousand and five. So we're because we
love Jordan, we're pushing our typical historical timeline a bit
in two thousand and five, the actual slippers, the props
that ished in the wee hours of the evening. They
were stolen will learn by a retired mobster who was Mexican,
(07:00):
me some heist music. He was desperate to make one
last score because he thought last job. Yeah. He thought
the shoes were encrusted and bedazzled with real rubies, and
he was convinced that he had made this huge win
(07:23):
until he went to an actual jeweler who says, I'm sorry,
but these are sequins and class. So he sat on
these stolen slippers for over ten years, and he had
no idea that one day these legendary shoes would sell
for thirty two point five million US dollars.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Much like MGM itself, though, you know, with the gift
of hindsight, I suppose had no idea that this was
going to be such a hot item. So fans of
the novels by Frank Alboon, specifically the original nineteen hundred
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, know that Dorothy Gale's
famous kicks were originally going to be silver slippers. That's
(08:09):
what they were in the book. Has a nice ring
to it, the silver slippers, but MGM brass did not
think that they would pop well enough on screen. This
was going to be obviously a very very important early
use of technicolor, going from black and white to color.
From when Dorothy lands in the Wonderful World of Oz.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
And silver.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Silver, we're not really flexing And the whole silver slippers
yellow brick road thing is about the gold standard as
a metaphor.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Well, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
And I don't know, man, I still to this day
I'm so baffled by how well it works when you
play Dark Side of the Moon along with the Wizard
of Oz. There's no way they could have done it
as on purpose as it seems. But boil boy, is
that a fun thing to do? So just start the record,
I think after the third roar of the MGM Lion.
The slippers were designed by legendary costumer Gilbert Adrian, who
(09:04):
was the chief costume designer over there at MGM. Originally
they were made in what was referred to as the
Arabian motif, with these curling toes and high heels, elaborate
jewel encrustation. They were using a costume test, but ultimately discarded.
(09:25):
I don't know at the time if I'm giving them
too much credit by saying they maybe realized it was problematic,
but it's certainly.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Here, Jordan, if you're listening, I will I will take
exception on this. I'll push back because the racist reasoning
for maybe not having them was that was probably that
Louie b Meyer who shows up in stuff they don't want,
you know, in a few episodes. He probably thought it
was too exotic for the time because it's a wholesome
(09:54):
Midwest fantasy story.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah, at least the way possibly the further reasons of
xenophobia that maybe led to them not being.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Used, at least the way they're framing that it's supposed
to be a wholesome Midwestern fantasy.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
So the second design after that one was mixed was
a bit closer to what we now know as the
famous iconic ruby slippers. However, they had one modification. The
red beads were initially deemed to be too heavy, and
they were ultimately replaced by two three hundred sequins per
shoe made of a gelatin material, which have since caused
(10:32):
an absolute nightmare for folks who are trying to maintain
and preserve these items.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yeah. Yeah, we'll get into some of the restoration, but
essentially the boffins who have to clean these shoes have
to do each sequin one by one with a very
small piece of cotton dipped in very cold water. It's
(10:59):
weird because the shoes themselves are not super duper or
nate nor elaborate. They're these white silk pumps made by
a place called the Inn's Shoe Company, and then they
get dyed red and then they put these burgundy sequined
organza overlays around it. And because technicolor, I still think
(11:22):
we all remember that moment where you watch the first
part of Wizard of Oz, the adaptation, and it's in
black and white, and then all of a sudden we
burst out into Oz and it's in technicolor. Incredible, it's amazing.
But technicolor technology was technically not techan because the shoes
(11:46):
would have looked orange on screen, so the costume team
had to correct for that. If you look at the
shoes in real life, you can see them at Smithsonian
over there in DC. Huge fans of that check out
their podcast Side Door. You'll see that the shoes are
not as impressive Irl as they are in the film
(12:09):
because they're darker.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
They're darker, and obviously the look of them in the
film had a lot to do with really really powerful
lights and just again the way that color saturated on
that Technicolor film. So, according to folks who worked on
the film, somewhere between six and ten pairs of size
five ruby slippers were made for the production. Not uncommon
to have, you know, duplicates for various reasons.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Some of these were meant to be used for close ups.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Other that were a little maybe less bespoke, were meant
to be used in wide shots when she was walking
and dancing. Perhaps they were not as ornately decorated so
they couldn't get messed up if they got dinged. These
had orange felt attached to the souls, so they didn't
make as much noise on the set, the yellow brick
roads set.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Yeah, exactly, And that makes sense for anybody in production.
We've got a lot of friends in the world of
movie making and motion pictures here in our metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia.
You know, you have to make all sorts of little
compromises and tweaks and fixes to get the effect you
(13:17):
want on screen. Let's get to the saga of a
guy named Kent Warner, which we have chosen to call
a memorabilia savior.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
So as we know now.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
We're jumping around in time here, folks. There are four
pairs of ruby slippers that were used on screen that
we know exists today, and the reason they exist today
is entirely due to our buddy Kent. He was working
in the costume department of an MGM project. And for decades,
(13:51):
as we mentioned at the top, the studios didn't really
care for their old movie props. You made the thing,
you hope it played well in theaters and for the audience,
and then you left stuff to gather dust in case
you needed it again. So if you did a film
and you know, ancient Egypt or something, you had all
(14:12):
that costumerey or all those props, and you would just
literally put them in storage on the off chance you
might be able to do another film about it, another
Egyptian picture coming right, yeah, or Greek film, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
In that kind of short sightedness too, as we know,
extended to the way they stored film as well. Like
you know, you had a lot of archival issues because
of the fact that these film stocks were or something
called vinegar syndrome as well, like there's a thing that
happens when you leave these things unprotected where they start
(14:47):
to more or less degrade over time. Not to mention Ben,
you're absolutely right, fire hazards. So a lot of this
stuff was very short sighted. They did not look at
this as a long term play in terms of archiving
and making sure that this stuff would be around for
future generations to enjoy on its own merits in terms
of like museum quality and can I also just really
(15:10):
quickly give a shout out to somebody who I know,
you know and love friend of the show and former
house stuff works Alum russ Vic, who works over there
at the Center for Puppet Shire Arts. I hadn't thought
about Russ in a minute, and I saw a video
on their instagram of Russ doing some incredible puppet restoration
on a globe from Pewee's Playhouse. And that is a
(15:32):
very similar type of process to what would have had
to have been done cleaning individually these sequence you know,
so you had to know about what kind of weird
methods were used at the time and then adjust accordingly.
So you're doing a good job and cleaning it rather
than making it worse.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, Russ is absolute, utter legend, good friend of the show,
good friend of ours, and and he works in rarefied
air as a restoration expert in a very specific genre.
Do check out the Center for Puppetry Arts if you
ever have the opportunity to visit Atlanta. We are huge
(16:10):
fans of very specific museums, and by golly bye gosh,
that is indeed one to the point about what happens
to these shoes. I've got to tell everybody. This reminds
me of when I was appearing in commercials for big
(16:32):
companies and we would have a production that lasts a
couple of days or whatever. Everybody and the crew walks
off with stuff, right, you hit up crafty, you get
a twelve pack whatever soda is left over. You might also,
just like members of the Wizard of Oz production crew,
you might just walk off with a souvenir, you know,
(16:54):
a little relic at your time there, and the studio
heads don't care. Louis Meyer is doing other stuff like
frantically and aggressively harassing women.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Yeah, yeah, story for another day, but that's absolutely true.
Is was the case with a lot of the big
wigs in these days and hey, in much more recent
time as we know, and you hear stories even in
more recent times of actors walking off with pieces of
wardrobe and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
You're not technically supposed to, but it does happen.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
But in these days it was not even like an
unspoken thing that it was a no no, It was
just they didn't really care. And that was largely because
again of that short sightedness. So whatever stuff got left
was just thrown kind of haphazardly into warehouses or basements
or barns, barely cataloged, just kind of very willy nilly
sort of ad hoc operation. But one person who absolutely
(17:42):
did care was that Kent Warner that we talked about
who worked for MGM in nineteen sixty nine when the
studio had just been sold and we're basically doing a
bit of house cleaning. So there was a lot of
stuff to comb through. Imagine like your one little storage unit.
This is that times, you know, one hundred kits.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Yeah, And so our buddy Kent looks at the studio
heads at the top brass as he's trying to clear
out all these dusty relics of older films, and they say,
all right, burn it, burn it all. Just start burning stuff.
And as he's about to set this bonfire, he sees
(18:20):
an overcoat and he looks a little closer. Ah, what's
wish he says, in a perfect impression, And he looks
inside the lining of the coat and someone has stitched
the name Bogart. It turns out this is the overcoat
that Bogart is wearing in Casablanca. And he starts to say, wait,
(18:42):
what if this is part of history, not just stuff
we should burn? And he goes to the studio and
he says, hey, I know you guys want me to
burn all this stuff, but could we keep it because
it maybe important later. And everyone at the studio is like,
I don't care.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
So he's wild to me. The lack of foresight on
this stuff.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
It just seems like it's their job to kind of
think about legacy stuff and literal no pun intended, big
picture scenarios.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Well, let's not paint them as villains, though absolutely not.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
It's just more of like a I don't know, it
was sort of the way things were done at the time,
But what what do you got?
Speaker 1 (19:20):
They had, not me, but they had other things on
their mind. And the reason I'm saying we can't paint
them entirely as villains, can't technicolor them as monsters, is
because they didn't get in the way of Kent taking
this stuff. Very true, you know, they said essentially, they
probably said, we need the square footage, we need the
(19:44):
space for other stuff. So you do with it what
you want. You can take it, you can burn it,
we don't care. We're not going to charge you. And
he does that. He takes this and eventually stars from
some of these earlier films start coming to him. For instance,
Debbie Reynolds becomes a regular customer of Kent's and she
(20:05):
would call him up and say, hey, can you find
costumes from films I did in the past, like Singing
in the Rain? And they would go digging, and he
would literally meet her in a parking lot behind a
drug store a rite aid on Fairfax and Sunset and
sell her stuff from the trunk of his car.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Pretty cool man. He was a real wheeler dealer.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
And you know, here are other situations.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Like where he would provide.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Some of these pieces to other actors who maybe were
looking for something that had a particular sentimental value. Sometimes
he would just give these pieces to folks who maybe
didn't even know it was coming, or it never even
occurred to them to ask about. Like an example where
Betty Davis was working on the Smothers Brother's comedy Hour
on the Lot and Warner brought her a Queen Elizabeth
(21:00):
costume that she'd worn in The Virgin Queen nineteen fifty
five film that she actually won an Academy Award for.
And so, as Jordan points out on All We Dig Kent,
Warner's vibe he is a venerable Robin Hood of memorabilia, right.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Stealing from the studio, given to the people. But it's
not really stealing, he's just finding it.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
He more or less had permission, he did. He very
much did so.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
At this point, our cigar chomping tycoons of the film industry,
the studio top dogs, they say, I're sitting on a
gold mine here. And they have a huge auction in
May of nineteen seventy and this auction is comprised of
(21:46):
hundreds of thousands of various props and costumes from over
the year. They go to our man Kent and they say,
find these things, anything of value? Cataloged them, and this
is where Kent finds the ruby slippers. He is pawing
through almost five hundred thousand different costume sets and then
(22:07):
he discovers them in and Jordan is on the fence
about this. The shoes are either discovered in a barn
that used to be on the MGM lot or in
a neglected basement. He finds three pairs of these slippers.
He only turns over one pair to MGM for the
(22:28):
auction and that becomes their centerpiece, that's like their big
ticket item. Then he sells another pair. You know, he's
side hustling behind the right aid, right, and he keeps
a third pair for himself and Noel. The pair he
keeps for himself is the best pair.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Arguably the nicest looking ones that would have been reserved
for those close up shots. Super beautiful and elaborate. So
what happened to the shoes? The MGM auction took place
again in nineteen seventy and they were bought by a
lawyer for fifteen grand. The lawyer is acting on behalf
of an unidentified client, and that's believed to be the
(23:08):
pair that is currently on permanent exhibition at the Smithsonian
Museum of American History in DC. It's been there since
nineteen seventy nine. Since then, there are a lot of ausi's,
you know, of people in the oz circles referring to
them as the People's shoes.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Oh, and for a quick inflation calculator, max, if we
could get a boop.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Of course, excuse me, we must at a dude. He
booped off, Mike, We've got the boob.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
So fifteen thousand dollars in nineteen seventy is one hundred
and twenty five and forty eight dollars and forty five
cents today.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
Still seems like a deal to me, considering where we're heading.
I think we tease that at the top of the
show the People's Shoes. To this day, that attraction is
so popular that the carpets surrounding the case in the
museum has had to be replaced on multiple occasions due
to the wear and tear from all of the tourists
and ozzies coming in to take a look. A lot
(24:12):
of very observant visitors will even notice that the shoes
on display are actually mismatched. Two of the pairs that
we talked about of those various dupes got jumbled up,
presumably back at the MGM lot, and to this day
they've never actually been rematched with one another.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Yeah yeah, let's go back to the fancy shoes that
Warner kept for a while. They're called the Witch's shoes.
They're the ones you see on the spoiler for Wizard
of Oz. There's a death very early odd in the show.
The Wicked Witch of the East has a house dropped
(24:49):
on her while she's wearing these lucky iconic magic shoes.
Those are the pair he is coveting right and holding
with him. They are are from those shots. Eventually, in
nineteen eighty one, he sells that pair at another auction
for twelve thousand dollars. One more inflation calculator. That's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
(25:14):
boopit and a dude, boopit, bop it, flex it. What's that?
Speaker 2 (25:22):
That's the thing? Yep, the boppit. Yeah you do. You
can twist it, pull it, punch it, stab it.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
I don't know, and Max, we need sylecus for all
of those. So it's twelve thousand dollars in nineteen eighty
one is the equivalent of forty two thousand, seven hundred
and sixty nine dollars and eleven cents today.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Man Bucky used to go so much further than't it?
Speaker 1 (25:46):
No kidding? So, unfortunately we know that Kent Warner is
no longer with us. He passed away in nineteen eighty
four due to some some medical issues. The witches shoe
change hands a number of times, or change feet.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Because it shoes, because it shoes.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
It changes feet and they're mismatched. Wait, no, maybe these
are these? Maybe these we don't know if these were mismatched.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
These are yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, So they change feet
a number of times. And why am I doing that joke?
It's crazy that I'm allowed to vote or drive anyway.
So at some point, these witches shoes get acquired by
a cabal, a shadowy Hollywood cabal, uh for the Academy
(26:35):
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Museum. Who's in the cabal?
We don't know all the members, but we know Leo
DiCaprio was there. We know Steven Spielberg was there. Is
that what it's called?
Speaker 3 (26:49):
No, that was what Leonardo DiCaprio's Little Gang of Homies
was called. Oh wow, yeah, Leo DiCaprio. Toby maguire a
handful of others. Toby, Toby was in the in the Pepassea.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
I say it like I'm about to call him after
this and telegon it does.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Seem like a sweet little cuddly fellow. Yeah. No, he
apparently banging his way all over town.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Oh geez, Well, there's another pair of shoes, the contest pair.
This was not acquired by our buddy Kent. A Tennessee
woman named Roberta Bauman got a genuine pair of the
Ruby Slippers after she after she entered a contest called
name the best movies of nineteen thirty nine was.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
The answer of the Wizard of Oz, that's the best
movies of nineteen thirty nine to.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
The Ruby Slippers were the door prize. They were the
second place prize.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
The contest pair. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
To illustrate just how little the organizers thought of these,
we need look no further than that very fact, Ben
they were the second place prize. They were sold in
nineteen eighty eight for one hundred and fifty grand to
a man who worked for the Walt Disney Company, who
had plans to put them in an entryway for their
Great Movie Ride in what was then known as their
(28:06):
MGM Park. They were sold again in two thousand for
a devilish amounts of six hundred and sixty six thousand
dollars to LA memorabilia dealers who have not displayed the
shoes reportedly, And that's probably, as Jordan points out, for
good reason when you hear about what happened to the
fourth and final pair.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Doom Doom, Doom, Doom, Doom, Doom Doom. The final pair
of ruby slippers were those that we mentioned earlier, the
ones Kent sold on the side in nineteen seventy and
he did that just during a little little bit extra cash.
(28:47):
That's the other side of the mismatched pair at the Smithsonian.
So for a long time these were on display at
the Judy Garland Museum over in Grand Rapids, where Judy
Garland used to live. And then on the night of
August twenty seventh, two thousand and five, a thief broken
in the night and he smashed the Plexi glass case
(29:08):
with a sledgehammer, and he ran away with the shoes.
He didn't put them on, he just held them and
ran away.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
It wouldn't have been cool, though, would be like dropped
through the ceiling like a mission impossible and then used
the diamond on the glass to.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Cut like a perfect circle out of it.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
Nah, this guy was not thinking that he was a
smash and grab artist.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
I've started saying falcon when I think stuff is cool.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
That'd be so.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
Falcon of him.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
That would be absolutely hell a falcon.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
What was not falcon was the fact that these things
were now missing, and an anonymous donor offered a million
bucks in exchange for information leading to their recovery.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
The actually the FBI actually got involved and a man
hunt began, which.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Yeah, thirteen year manhut. I just got to say priorities, right,
The FBI had other stuff to.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
Do, it would think, so, I mean, MGM had other
stuff to do. You'd think the FBI, I would definitely
have other stuff to do.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
How many children can you feed with a million dollars?
How many libraries or hospitals can you help out? Anyway,
let me get off this.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
So No, it's a good point, Ben, but Andy, this
is not the This is not all they did. They
actually dredged a lake, searched an old mine, you know,
all the things you do usually when you're looking for
a body.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Some slippers.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
I guess the fact that they were potentially worth a
lot of money, but dude did not seem to realize
that once he got the info from his jeweler that
they were not in fact encrusted with actual precious stones exactly.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Yeah. Can you imagine He's like, I went to all
this trouble. These shoes are recovered in twenty eighteen because
there is an FBI steamed operation in Minneapolis. A guy
approaches this insurer and says, Hey, I know a guy
who knows a guy who knows a guy. I can
maybe get these shoes back for you, but I need
(31:03):
two hundred thousand dollars more than the one million dollars
being offered.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Very specific, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Very specific. He's definitely looking for a vigorous there.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
And it would appear that the FBI never gave any
further information about the sting. But five years later, a
federal grand jury indicted a Minnesota man by the name
of Terry John Martin's on one count of theft, for
which he pled guilty. Terry John Martin's Jordan puts it
a dumb mobster or the dumbest mobster.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
I think we've already choic.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
Hinted at the level of his lack of preparedness and
seeming ineptitude every stage of this operation. Martin was a
former mobster who had a long history of b and
ease as they call them, breaking and entering burgling jobs.
Not so much heist kind of guy, more of a
smash and grab type dude, you know, glorified per snatcher.
(31:58):
He also was known for receiving stolen goods, potentially fencing them, etc.
Before retiring from his life of crime after being released
from prison in nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Yeah, yeah, so this is not a guy who's a
hit man.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
He's not a nice man.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
He didn't make his bones, but he was very into
what we call petty crime, a second story artist, according
to his public defender, as he was trying to live
the square life post nineteen ninety six, a former associate
from his criminal past came to him and said, one
(32:34):
last job.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
He's the one that always gets yet, that's the.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
One that gets you, you know what I mean, walk
away from the casino of crime while you can. It's
two thousand and five. This guy comes to him and
he says, Terry, I gotta tell you about a very
special pair of shoes. And at first Terry says, nah,
I'm out of the life. You know, I'm into beanie
babies or whatever. Now the baboos boo oo, and so
(33:01):
at first he passes on it, according to the Attorney
Dane decree. But old habits die hard. This is a
quote from Dane. And the thought of a final score
kept Terry up at night.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
It always does.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah, So after a lot of deep thought, some come
to Jesus. Moments there in the dark, Terry relapses and
he says, all right.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
I'm your huckleberry. I'll do it. I'll do one. I'll
do this smash and grab for you.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
He, of course, as we mentioned, mistakenly believed the ruby
slippers were adorned with actual rubies, and it wasn't until
he stole the things took him to a a.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
So called jewelry fence.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Someone who buys and sells core stolen goods in the
jewelry world, possibly someone you might find in the gem district,
as portrayed in the film Uncut Gems.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Sure in Manhattan.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
It was, in fact, of course, as we'd mentioned, made
of glass and sequins. Party cities equals Wait a minute,
why would party party city didn't exist back then?
Speaker 1 (34:04):
We're just styling on it, okay, God, yeah, just to
say that they are of low value.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Also, rip party City. It's gone, no more party city,
no more parties. The real party city is the friends
we make along. That's very true.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
So Terry John Martin reportedly had never seen The Wizard
of Them.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Which is weird.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
He was too, well, he was in prison for.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
A while, that's true.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
But that's the kind of movie they'd like show on
a movie night in prison. You know, I don't know,
maybe it's a little too racy, right. But he also
he also was.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Living a very different B and E focused life, so
he was Yes, he was born in the late nineteen forties.
He was in the prime age because this became a
cult classic so quickly. But he he was about the
idea of stealing the shoes as a gem heist to
this point. So when he learned that the ruby slippers
(34:55):
were indeed not encrusted with a ton of rubies, they
weren't like Faberge eggs your feet or whatever, he thought
they were worthless and he just kept them for years.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Yeah, he wasn't sitting on him hoping they with like
appreciating value. He's sort of done with them, which is interesting.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
He get GMed them, just did his studio.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
You know what he did mgm them.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
It is interesting though, because you think he would have
knowing at least in his mind, that this was not
going to have been worth the risk that he has
already run by doing this crime. Why didn't he just
ditch him or give them to somebody else or whatever.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
He says he did forty eight hours or less than
forty eight hours after the heist. Our our second story
artist gave these to a third party, but the answers
aren't clear. We do know the shoes ultimately get returned
to the museum, and our buddy Terry, who is in
his late seventies at this point, he goes to court hearings.
(35:52):
He's got he's in a wheelchair, he has to breathe
supplemental oxygen because he has COPD with which you know, unfortunately,
as some of us may know, that's a very dangerous condition.
He pleads guilty. He's sentenced to time served, which means
he doesn't go back to prison in January of last year,
(36:14):
and he gets time served because of his very poor
health and his guilty plea. His lawyer says, I think
you wanted to take responsibility to move on with his life,
the little life he has left.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
I hate hearing that. I know he goes on. I
think he lived a fast and loose life, and I
think he's okay with what's happening now. I think he's
at peace with it.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
Frankly, and Jordan points out that at the time he
was given six months to live.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
However, we have not seen any updates as.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
To his.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
Passing or lack thereof, so it would appear that he
may still be living in hospice today.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
And our last note for today's episode, those ruby slippers
that were stolen in Returned were put up for sale
by Heritage Auction in December twenty twenty four, and the
auctioneers believed that these slippers would earn something like three
million dollars. That's right, three million dollars is where it got.
(37:12):
In the first couple of.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
Seconds of the auction opening, more than eight hundred people
placed bids, and ultimately an unknown buyer spent thirty two
point five million bucks on these making them the most
valuable piece of movie memorabilia ever to be.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Sold at auction.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
And I think we actually we talked about this story
on Strange News when it happened, because that was a
big deal when the sold, and it had a connection
to this hight story. So it's really cool to kind
of dig in and get some more of the details
surrounding this incredible, bizarre and dare we say, ridiculous story
(37:51):
of what happened to the ruby slippers.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
And this is so this is our last point. This
is so illustrative of how arbitrary value can be for memorabilia.
In nineteen eighty nine, as Jordan points out, a pair
of actual ruby encrusted ruby slippers were made as a
celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Wizard of Oz
(38:15):
film adaptation, and they were only worth about three millions,
so much less than the fake ones. This is this
is so nuts. This has been such a wild ride.
Thank you folks for tuning in and walking the yellow
brick road with us. Big thanks to our super producer
mister Max Williams, as well as Alex Williams who.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
Composed this track, of course, and thanks again to Jordan
runtag and check out his podcast Too Much Information, where
he does deep dives and all kinds of fun pop
culture stuff ranging from you know.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
I think like a multi multi part episode on the
making of.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
The film Titanic. So do give him a listen. Christ
Frasiotis and eaves. Jeff Coates here in Spirra, Jonathan Strickland
quizt hey j Mohamed Jacob's the Puzzler.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Yes, yes, Mangesh Hadakatur friend of the show. We might
have him on later. Our Pals Daily Zeitgeist, our Pals
at Ridiculous Crime. If you dig us and stories like this,
you will love them. So get thee to thy podcast
platform of choice. And I've got to tell you, I
(39:22):
always wonder which character I would be in The Wizard
of Oz.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
I think you're kind of a no, no, no, you're
a bit of a wizard man us. I think that's nice.
You've said to be a twenty five Well, I mean,
and I don't want to Oh, is it not a compliment?
It is? It is a compliment in this contest.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Then you are the version of the Wizard that comes
clean and gives out all of.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
The honorifics and all of the.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Who do you want to be at the show?
Speaker 3 (39:52):
I don't know, man, I'm sort of a cowardly lion
type figure. I guess, or I could be a scarecrow.
I identify with both of those casts.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
I identify with the sc I think we all are
at some point in our lives. Well, thanks so much, man,
Everybody tune in next week. We've got more ridiculous history
on the way.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
much for tuning in. Shout out to Las Vegas is
the Sphere. Shout out to our super producer, mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Max, There's no place like home. There's no place like home, Williams.
There we go.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Love it. That's mister Noel Brown, returned from some adventures.
They call me Ben Bullen in this part of the
world due to some ongoing litigation. Look, once upon a time,
as our pal Jordan told us, Uh, the Wizard of
Oz was a big deal. Did you ever read the
old books by there was a book?
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, no, I did.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
I am aware of the book, and apparently in the
book the slippers are silver, But that did I wouldn't
have translated to the silver screen as well as read
for some reason and the infinite wisdom of the pictures
and the golden age of Hollywood. Yeah, no, I do
love the story. You know if the Frank Albaum series
(01:29):
of books, which also I believe encompassed a lot of
the lore that went into the utterly terrifying children's film
Returned to Oz. Yes, like Queen Momby And there's some
ruby slippers in that one too, by the Gnome King
and the.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Most unfriendly rollerbladers in.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
The Wheeler History nightmare stuff my friends.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Ah, yes, yeah, that's one of those things that will
encourage the Mandela effect because you're wondering whether or not
that actually happened or if you just had a traumatic
childhood fever dream.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
In the film Young Ferusa Bulk, you may remember from
the Craft, I'm still terrified to other things. Yeah, for sure,
she's great in the Craft, and she's also an American
History X when she was a kid, and she's in
this film and her character has I believe, been committed
to a psychiatric institute and is given like shock treatment
(02:22):
and that's what leads her to re hallucinate Oz kind
of and it's boy, is it ever dark?
Speaker 1 (02:29):
And I wonder what I wonder what Frank would think
about that, what the author Baum would think.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Anyway, here's a Disney picture by the way.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Right, Yeah, yeah, a lot of stuff got co signed
by Disney.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
This was a golden era for Mega Mega Dark Live
Action Disney. This is the I want to say, early nineties.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
People were going through stuff, you know, Alison Shean's was big.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
It was a whole thing, all right.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Here's our story for today, courtesy of our phenomenal research
associate friend of the show, Jordan run Talk. In the
story Wizard of Oz, the film adaptation, our protagonist Dorothy
Gale Tornado jokes true, she has gifted a pair of
(03:23):
magic ruby slippers, and these are actual artifacts because the
MGM studio, their prop department did, of course have to
make actual ruby slippers. These have become one of the
most coveted bobbles in movie history.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Pieces of movie memorabilia.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
And we're going to get to some great info Jordan
found about how like at the time, movie memorabilia was
not a thing, the studios didn't know what they had.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
I guess they just didn't have.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
A long view of it all, and this kind of
kind of popped up as a cottage industry that then,
of course became incredibly lucrative.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
They were still using as best This is snow exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
Oh totally.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Yeah, there's a lot of a lot that's maybe another episode,
because there's a lot of crazy behind the scenes stuff
involving the production of the Wizard of Oz.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Ben Mins. I imagine as you mentioned the sphere in
Las Vegas.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
You're aware of this bizarre sort of event experience. I
guess where they've reimagined The Wizard of Oz film through
enhancements using AI and machine learning in order to widen
the frame of this classic Golden Age Hollywood film to
encompass the entire three hundred and sixty degrees of the
(04:41):
Vegas sphere. There's also live action elements where the flying
monkeys swoop in on like you know, like what do
you call it? Wires and you know, hurricane wind effects
and all that. Very four D cinema at its arguably,
I don't know, kind of most gross. It's not my thing.
Maybe if it's free you by all means up you
enjoy yourself. But general, you little odd, little odd, that's
(05:05):
a general you ridiculous historians. This fear has fascinated all
three of us and hopefully you as well since its construction.
Check out our pals. I was hanging with Jack and
Miles talking about this earlier. I can't remember when, but
it is.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
You know, the best way to do it, since we
want to save some time here, is to go to
the New York Times article from September one, twenty twenty
five by Alyssa Wilkinson, and I love the title here,
nol it is. It is film criticism, and the headline reads,
is the Wizard of oz a Sphere the future of cinema?
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Or the end of it? That is the question.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
I mean, you know, it's sort of part and parcel
of the kinds of conversations that folks have around let's
say George Lucas reimagining his previous films and making the
original versions no longer able to be seen or acquired,
And then the question then becomes like, is there any
end to this kind of revisionist history of like classic cinema?
(06:11):
And I would argue this is maybe not at the end.
I don't want to be dire about it, but it
just kind of rubs me the wrong way. So we
are talking more specifically about the original creation of this
incredible piece of Hollywood history and some of the props
and the screen used pieces that kind of developed a
life of their own in terms of like Hollywood lore.
(06:33):
And there's a really really cool story surrounding these ruby slippers.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Yes, in two thousand and five. So we're because we
love Jordan, we're pushing our typical historical timeline a bit
in two thousand and five, the actual slippers, the props
that ished in the wee hours of the evening. They
were stolen will learn by a retired mobster who was Mexican,
(07:00):
me some heist music. He was desperate to make one
last score because he thought last job. Yeah. He thought
the shoes were encrusted and bedazzled with real rubies, and
he was convinced that he had made this huge win
(07:23):
until he went to an actual jeweler who says, I'm sorry,
but these are sequins and class. So he sat on
these stolen slippers for over ten years, and he had
no idea that one day these legendary shoes would sell
for thirty two point five million US dollars.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Much like MGM itself, though, you know, with the gift
of hindsight, I suppose had no idea that this was
going to be such a hot item. So fans of
the novels by Frank Alboon, specifically the original nineteen hundred
book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, know that Dorothy Gale's
famous kicks were originally going to be silver slippers. That's
(08:09):
what they were in the book. Has a nice ring
to it, the silver slippers, but MGM brass did not
think that they would pop well enough on screen. This
was going to be obviously a very very important early
use of technicolor, going from black and white to color.
From when Dorothy lands in the Wonderful World of Oz.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
And silver.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Silver, we're not really flexing And the whole silver slippers
yellow brick road thing is about the gold standard as
a metaphor.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Well, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
And I don't know, man, I still to this day
I'm so baffled by how well it works when you
play Dark Side of the Moon along with the Wizard
of Oz. There's no way they could have done it
as on purpose as it seems. But boil boy, is
that a fun thing to do? So just start the record,
I think after the third roar of the MGM Lion.
The slippers were designed by legendary costumer Gilbert Adrian, who
(09:04):
was the chief costume designer over there at MGM. Originally
they were made in what was referred to as the
Arabian motif, with these curling toes and high heels, elaborate
jewel encrustation. They were using a costume test, but ultimately discarded.
(09:25):
I don't know at the time if I'm giving them
too much credit by saying they maybe realized it was problematic,
but it's certainly.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Here, Jordan, if you're listening, I will I will take
exception on this. I'll push back because the racist reasoning
for maybe not having them was that was probably that
Louie b Meyer who shows up in stuff they don't want,
you know, in a few episodes. He probably thought it
was too exotic for the time because it's a wholesome
(09:54):
Midwest fantasy story.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah, at least the way possibly the further reasons of
xenophobia that maybe led to them not being.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Used, at least the way they're framing that it's supposed
to be a wholesome Midwestern fantasy.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
So the second design after that one was mixed was
a bit closer to what we now know as the
famous iconic ruby slippers. However, they had one modification. The
red beads were initially deemed to be too heavy, and
they were ultimately replaced by two three hundred sequins per
shoe made of a gelatin material, which have since caused
(10:32):
an absolute nightmare for folks who are trying to maintain
and preserve these items.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Yeah. Yeah, we'll get into some of the restoration, but
essentially the boffins who have to clean these shoes have
to do each sequin one by one with a very
small piece of cotton dipped in very cold water. It's
(10:59):
weird because the shoes themselves are not super duper or
nate nor elaborate. They're these white silk pumps made by
a place called the Inn's Shoe Company, and then they
get dyed red and then they put these burgundy sequined
organza overlays around it. And because technicolor, I still think
(11:22):
we all remember that moment where you watch the first
part of Wizard of Oz, the adaptation, and it's in
black and white, and then all of a sudden we
burst out into Oz and it's in technicolor. Incredible, it's amazing.
But technicolor technology was technically not techan because the shoes
(11:46):
would have looked orange on screen, so the costume team
had to correct for that. If you look at the
shoes in real life, you can see them at Smithsonian
over there in DC. Huge fans of that check out
their podcast Side Door. You'll see that the shoes are
not as impressive Irl as they are in the film
(12:09):
because they're darker.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
They're darker, and obviously the look of them in the
film had a lot to do with really really powerful
lights and just again the way that color saturated on
that Technicolor film. So, according to folks who worked on
the film, somewhere between six and ten pairs of size
five ruby slippers were made for the production. Not uncommon
to have, you know, duplicates for various reasons.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Some of these were meant to be used for close ups.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
Other that were a little maybe less bespoke, were meant
to be used in wide shots when she was walking
and dancing. Perhaps they were not as ornately decorated so
they couldn't get messed up if they got dinged. These
had orange felt attached to the souls, so they didn't
make as much noise on the set, the yellow brick
roads set.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Yeah, exactly, And that makes sense for anybody in production.
We've got a lot of friends in the world of
movie making and motion pictures here in our metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia.
You know, you have to make all sorts of little
compromises and tweaks and fixes to get the effect you
(13:17):
want on screen. Let's get to the saga of a
guy named Kent Warner, which we have chosen to call
a memorabilia savior.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
So as we know now.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
We're jumping around in time here, folks. There are four
pairs of ruby slippers that were used on screen that
we know exists today, and the reason they exist today
is entirely due to our buddy Kent. He was working
in the costume department of an MGM project. And for decades,
(13:51):
as we mentioned at the top, the studios didn't really
care for their old movie props. You made the thing,
you hope it played well in theaters and for the audience,
and then you left stuff to gather dust in case
you needed it again. So if you did a film
and you know, ancient Egypt or something, you had all
(14:12):
that costumerey or all those props, and you would just
literally put them in storage on the off chance you
might be able to do another film about it, another
Egyptian picture coming right, yeah, or Greek film, you know
what I mean.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
In that kind of short sightedness too, as we know,
extended to the way they stored film as well. Like
you know, you had a lot of archival issues because
of the fact that these film stocks were or something
called vinegar syndrome as well, like there's a thing that
happens when you leave these things unprotected where they start
(14:47):
to more or less degrade over time. Not to mention Ben,
you're absolutely right, fire hazards. So a lot of this
stuff was very short sighted. They did not look at
this as a long term play in terms of archiving
and making sure that this stuff would be around for
future generations to enjoy on its own merits in terms
of like museum quality and can I also just really
(15:10):
quickly give a shout out to somebody who I know,
you know and love friend of the show and former
house stuff works Alum russ Vic, who works over there
at the Center for Puppet Shire Arts. I hadn't thought
about Russ in a minute, and I saw a video
on their instagram of Russ doing some incredible puppet restoration
on a globe from Pewee's Playhouse. And that is a
(15:32):
very similar type of process to what would have had
to have been done cleaning individually these sequence you know,
so you had to know about what kind of weird
methods were used at the time and then adjust accordingly.
So you're doing a good job and cleaning it rather
than making it worse.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Yeah, Russ is absolute, utter legend, good friend of the show,
good friend of ours, and and he works in rarefied
air as a restoration expert in a very specific genre.
Do check out the Center for Puppetry Arts if you
ever have the opportunity to visit Atlanta. We are huge
(16:10):
fans of very specific museums, and by golly bye gosh,
that is indeed one to the point about what happens
to these shoes. I've got to tell everybody. This reminds
me of when I was appearing in commercials for big
(16:32):
companies and we would have a production that lasts a
couple of days or whatever. Everybody and the crew walks
off with stuff, right, you hit up crafty, you get
a twelve pack whatever soda is left over. You might also,
just like members of the Wizard of Oz production crew,
you might just walk off with a souvenir, you know,
(16:54):
a little relic at your time there, and the studio
heads don't care. Louis Meyer is doing other stuff like
frantically and aggressively harassing women.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Yeah, yeah, story for another day, but that's absolutely true.
Is was the case with a lot of the big
wigs in these days and hey, in much more recent
time as we know, and you hear stories even in
more recent times of actors walking off with pieces of
wardrobe and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
You're not technically supposed to, but it does happen.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
But in these days it was not even like an
unspoken thing that it was a no no, It was
just they didn't really care. And that was largely because
again of that short sightedness. So whatever stuff got left
was just thrown kind of haphazardly into warehouses or basements
or barns, barely cataloged, just kind of very willy nilly
sort of ad hoc operation. But one person who absolutely
(17:42):
did care was that Kent Warner that we talked about
who worked for MGM in nineteen sixty nine when the
studio had just been sold and we're basically doing a
bit of house cleaning. So there was a lot of
stuff to comb through. Imagine like your one little storage unit.
This is that times, you know, one hundred kits.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
Yeah, And so our buddy Kent looks at the studio
heads at the top brass as he's trying to clear
out all these dusty relics of older films, and they say,
all right, burn it, burn it all. Just start burning stuff.
And as he's about to set this bonfire, he sees
(18:20):
an overcoat and he looks a little closer. Ah, what's
wish he says, in a perfect impression, And he looks
inside the lining of the coat and someone has stitched
the name Bogart. It turns out this is the overcoat
that Bogart is wearing in Casablanca. And he starts to say, wait,
(18:42):
what if this is part of history, not just stuff
we should burn? And he goes to the studio and
he says, hey, I know you guys want me to
burn all this stuff, but could we keep it because
it maybe important later. And everyone at the studio is like,
I don't care.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
So he's wild to me. The lack of foresight on
this stuff.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
It just seems like it's their job to kind of
think about legacy stuff and literal no pun intended, big
picture scenarios.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Well, let's not paint them as villains, though absolutely not.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
It's just more of like a I don't know, it
was sort of the way things were done at the time,
But what what do you got?
Speaker 1 (19:20):
They had, not me, but they had other things on
their mind. And the reason I'm saying we can't paint
them entirely as villains, can't technicolor them as monsters, is
because they didn't get in the way of Kent taking
this stuff. Very true, you know, they said essentially, they
probably said, we need the square footage, we need the
(19:44):
space for other stuff. So you do with it what
you want. You can take it, you can burn it,
we don't care. We're not going to charge you. And
he does that. He takes this and eventually stars from
some of these earlier films start coming to him. For instance,
Debbie Reynolds becomes a regular customer of Kent's and she
(20:05):
would call him up and say, hey, can you find
costumes from films I did in the past, like Singing
in the Rain? And they would go digging, and he
would literally meet her in a parking lot behind a
drug store a rite aid on Fairfax and Sunset and
sell her stuff from the trunk of his car.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Pretty cool man. He was a real wheeler dealer.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
And you know, here are other situations.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
Like where he would provide.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
Some of these pieces to other actors who maybe were
looking for something that had a particular sentimental value. Sometimes
he would just give these pieces to folks who maybe
didn't even know it was coming, or it never even
occurred to them to ask about. Like an example where
Betty Davis was working on the Smothers Brother's comedy Hour
on the Lot and Warner brought her a Queen Elizabeth
(21:00):
costume that she'd worn in The Virgin Queen nineteen fifty
five film that she actually won an Academy Award for.
And so, as Jordan points out on All We Dig Kent,
Warner's vibe he is a venerable Robin Hood of memorabilia, right.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Stealing from the studio, given to the people. But it's
not really stealing, he's just finding it.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
He more or less had permission, he did. He very
much did so.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
At this point, our cigar chomping tycoons of the film industry,
the studio top dogs, they say, I're sitting on a
gold mine here. And they have a huge auction in
May of nineteen seventy and this auction is comprised of
(21:46):
hundreds of thousands of various props and costumes from over
the year. They go to our man Kent and they say,
find these things, anything of value? Cataloged them, and this
is where Kent finds the ruby slippers. He is pawing
through almost five hundred thousand different costume sets and then
(22:07):
he discovers them in and Jordan is on the fence
about this. The shoes are either discovered in a barn
that used to be on the MGM lot or in
a neglected basement. He finds three pairs of these slippers.
He only turns over one pair to MGM for the
(22:28):
auction and that becomes their centerpiece, that's like their big
ticket item. Then he sells another pair. You know, he's
side hustling behind the right aid, right, and he keeps
a third pair for himself and Noel. The pair he
keeps for himself is the best pair.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Arguably the nicest looking ones that would have been reserved
for those close up shots. Super beautiful and elaborate. So
what happened to the shoes? The MGM auction took place
again in nineteen seventy and they were bought by a
lawyer for fifteen grand. The lawyer is acting on behalf
of an unidentified client, and that's believed to be the
(23:08):
pair that is currently on permanent exhibition at the Smithsonian
Museum of American History in DC. It's been there since
nineteen seventy nine. Since then, there are a lot of ausi's,
you know, of people in the oz circles referring to
them as the People's shoes.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Oh, and for a quick inflation calculator, max, if we
could get a boop.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
Of course, excuse me, we must at a dude. He
booped off, Mike, We've got the boob.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
So fifteen thousand dollars in nineteen seventy is one hundred
and twenty five and forty eight dollars and forty five
cents today.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
Still seems like a deal to me, considering where we're heading.
I think we tease that at the top of the
show the People's Shoes. To this day, that attraction is
so popular that the carpets surrounding the case in the
museum has had to be replaced on multiple occasions due
to the wear and tear from all of the tourists
and ozzies coming in to take a look. A lot
(24:12):
of very observant visitors will even notice that the shoes
on display are actually mismatched. Two of the pairs that
we talked about of those various dupes got jumbled up,
presumably back at the MGM lot, and to this day
they've never actually been rematched with one another.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Yeah yeah, let's go back to the fancy shoes that
Warner kept for a while. They're called the Witch's shoes.
They're the ones you see on the spoiler for Wizard
of Oz. There's a death very early odd in the show.
The Wicked Witch of the East has a house dropped
(24:49):
on her while she's wearing these lucky iconic magic shoes.
Those are the pair he is coveting right and holding
with him. They are are from those shots. Eventually, in
nineteen eighty one, he sells that pair at another auction
for twelve thousand dollars. One more inflation calculator. That's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
(25:14):
boopit and a dude, boopit, bop it, flex it. What's that?
Speaker 2 (25:22):
That's the thing? Yep, the boppit. Yeah you do. You
can twist it, pull it, punch it, stab it.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
I don't know, and Max, we need sylecus for all
of those. So it's twelve thousand dollars in nineteen eighty
one is the equivalent of forty two thousand, seven hundred
and sixty nine dollars and eleven cents today.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Man Bucky used to go so much further than't it?
Speaker 1 (25:46):
No kidding? So, unfortunately we know that Kent Warner is
no longer with us. He passed away in nineteen eighty
four due to some some medical issues. The witches shoe
change hands a number of times, or change feet.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Because it shoes, because it shoes.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
It changes feet and they're mismatched. Wait, no, maybe these
are these? Maybe these we don't know if these were mismatched.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
These are yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, So they change feet
a number of times. And why am I doing that joke?
It's crazy that I'm allowed to vote or drive anyway.
So at some point, these witches shoes get acquired by
a cabal, a shadowy Hollywood cabal, uh for the Academy
(26:35):
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Museum. Who's in the cabal?
We don't know all the members, but we know Leo
DiCaprio was there. We know Steven Spielberg was there. Is
that what it's called?
Speaker 3 (26:49):
No, that was what Leonardo DiCaprio's Little Gang of Homies
was called. Oh wow, yeah, Leo DiCaprio. Toby maguire a
handful of others. Toby, Toby was in the in the Pepassea.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
I say it like I'm about to call him after
this and telegon it does.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
Seem like a sweet little cuddly fellow. Yeah. No, he
apparently banging his way all over town.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Oh geez, Well, there's another pair of shoes, the contest pair.
This was not acquired by our buddy Kent. A Tennessee
woman named Roberta Bauman got a genuine pair of the
Ruby Slippers after she after she entered a contest called
name the best movies of nineteen thirty nine was.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
The answer of the Wizard of Oz, that's the best
movies of nineteen thirty nine to.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
The Ruby Slippers were the door prize. They were the
second place prize.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
The contest pair. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
To illustrate just how little the organizers thought of these,
we need look no further than that very fact, Ben
they were the second place prize. They were sold in
nineteen eighty eight for one hundred and fifty grand to
a man who worked for the Walt Disney Company, who
had plans to put them in an entryway for their
Great Movie Ride in what was then known as their
(28:06):
MGM Park. They were sold again in two thousand for
a devilish amounts of six hundred and sixty six thousand
dollars to LA memorabilia dealers who have not displayed the
shoes reportedly, And that's probably, as Jordan points out, for
good reason when you hear about what happened to the
fourth and final pair.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Doom Doom, Doom, Doom, Doom, Doom Doom. The final pair
of ruby slippers were those that we mentioned earlier, the
ones Kent sold on the side in nineteen seventy and
he did that just during a little little bit extra cash.
(28:47):
That's the other side of the mismatched pair at the Smithsonian.
So for a long time these were on display at
the Judy Garland Museum over in Grand Rapids, where Judy
Garland used to live. And then on the night of
August twenty seventh, two thousand and five, a thief broken
in the night and he smashed the Plexi glass case
(29:08):
with a sledgehammer, and he ran away with the shoes.
He didn't put them on, he just held them and
ran away.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
It wouldn't have been cool, though, would be like dropped
through the ceiling like a mission impossible and then used
the diamond on the glass to.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Cut like a perfect circle out of it.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
Nah, this guy was not thinking that he was a
smash and grab artist.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
I've started saying falcon when I think stuff is cool.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
That'd be so.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
Falcon of him.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
That would be absolutely hell a falcon.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
What was not falcon was the fact that these things
were now missing, and an anonymous donor offered a million
bucks in exchange for information leading to their recovery.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
The actually the FBI actually got involved and a man
hunt began, which.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Yeah, thirteen year manhut. I just got to say priorities, right,
The FBI had other stuff to.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
Do, it would think, so, I mean, MGM had other
stuff to do. You'd think the FBI, I would definitely
have other stuff to do.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
How many children can you feed with a million dollars?
How many libraries or hospitals can you help out? Anyway,
let me get off this.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
So No, it's a good point, Ben, but Andy, this
is not the This is not all they did. They
actually dredged a lake, searched an old mine, you know,
all the things you do usually when you're looking for
a body.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Some slippers.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
I guess the fact that they were potentially worth a
lot of money, but dude did not seem to realize
that once he got the info from his jeweler that
they were not in fact encrusted with actual precious stones exactly.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Yeah. Can you imagine He's like, I went to all
this trouble. These shoes are recovered in twenty eighteen because
there is an FBI steamed operation in Minneapolis. A guy
approaches this insurer and says, Hey, I know a guy
who knows a guy who knows a guy. I can
maybe get these shoes back for you, but I need
(31:03):
two hundred thousand dollars more than the one million dollars
being offered.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Very specific, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Very specific. He's definitely looking for a vigorous there.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
And it would appear that the FBI never gave any
further information about the sting. But five years later, a
federal grand jury indicted a Minnesota man by the name
of Terry John Martin's on one count of theft, for
which he pled guilty. Terry John Martin's Jordan puts it
a dumb mobster or the dumbest mobster.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
I think we've already choic.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
Hinted at the level of his lack of preparedness and
seeming ineptitude every stage of this operation. Martin was a
former mobster who had a long history of b and
ease as they call them, breaking and entering burgling jobs.
Not so much heist kind of guy, more of a
smash and grab type dude, you know, glorified per snatcher.
(31:58):
He also was known for receiving stolen goods, potentially fencing them, etc.
Before retiring from his life of crime after being released
from prison in nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Yeah, yeah, so this is not a guy who's a
hit man.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
He's not a nice man.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
He didn't make his bones, but he was very into
what we call petty crime, a second story artist, according
to his public defender, as he was trying to live
the square life post nineteen ninety six, a former associate
from his criminal past came to him and said, one
(32:34):
last job.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
He's the one that always gets yet, that's the.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
One that gets you, you know what I mean, walk
away from the casino of crime while you can. It's
two thousand and five. This guy comes to him and
he says, Terry, I gotta tell you about a very
special pair of shoes. And at first Terry says, nah,
I'm out of the life. You know, I'm into beanie
babies or whatever. Now the baboos boo oo, and so
(33:01):
at first he passes on it, according to the Attorney
Dane decree. But old habits die hard. This is a
quote from Dane. And the thought of a final score
kept Terry up at night.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
It always does.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah, So after a lot of deep thought, some come
to Jesus. Moments there in the dark, Terry relapses and
he says, all right.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
I'm your huckleberry. I'll do it. I'll do one. I'll
do this smash and grab for you.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
He, of course, as we mentioned, mistakenly believed the ruby
slippers were adorned with actual rubies, and it wasn't until
he stole the things took him to a a.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
So called jewelry fence.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Someone who buys and sells core stolen goods in the
jewelry world, possibly someone you might find in the gem district,
as portrayed in the film Uncut Gems.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Sure in Manhattan.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
It was, in fact, of course, as we'd mentioned, made
of glass and sequins. Party cities equals Wait a minute,
why would party party city didn't exist back then?
Speaker 1 (34:04):
We're just styling on it, okay, God, yeah, just to
say that they are of low value.
Speaker 2 (34:09):
Also, rip party City. It's gone, no more party city,
no more parties. The real party city is the friends
we make along. That's very true.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
So Terry John Martin reportedly had never seen The Wizard
of Them.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
Which is weird.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
He was too, well, he was in prison for.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
A while, that's true.
Speaker 3 (34:24):
But that's the kind of movie they'd like show on
a movie night in prison. You know, I don't know,
maybe it's a little too racy, right. But he also
he also was.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Living a very different B and E focused life, so
he was Yes, he was born in the late nineteen forties.
He was in the prime age because this became a
cult classic so quickly. But he he was about the
idea of stealing the shoes as a gem heist to
this point. So when he learned that the ruby slippers
(34:55):
were indeed not encrusted with a ton of rubies, they
weren't like Faberge eggs your feet or whatever, he thought
they were worthless and he just kept them for years.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
Yeah, he wasn't sitting on him hoping they with like
appreciating value. He's sort of done with them, which is interesting.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
He get GMed them, just did his studio.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
You know what he did mgm them.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
It is interesting though, because you think he would have
knowing at least in his mind, that this was not
going to have been worth the risk that he has
already run by doing this crime. Why didn't he just
ditch him or give them to somebody else or whatever.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
He says he did forty eight hours or less than
forty eight hours after the heist. Our our second story
artist gave these to a third party, but the answers
aren't clear. We do know the shoes ultimately get returned
to the museum, and our buddy Terry, who is in
his late seventies at this point, he goes to court hearings.
(35:52):
He's got he's in a wheelchair, he has to breathe
supplemental oxygen because he has COPD with which you know, unfortunately,
as some of us may know, that's a very dangerous condition.
He pleads guilty. He's sentenced to time served, which means
he doesn't go back to prison in January of last year,
(36:14):
and he gets time served because of his very poor
health and his guilty plea. His lawyer says, I think
you wanted to take responsibility to move on with his life,
the little life he has left.
Speaker 2 (36:28):
I hate hearing that. I know he goes on. I
think he lived a fast and loose life, and I
think he's okay with what's happening now. I think he's
at peace with it.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
Frankly, and Jordan points out that at the time he
was given six months to live.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
However, we have not seen any updates as.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
To his.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
Passing or lack thereof, so it would appear that he
may still be living in hospice today.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
And our last note for today's episode, those ruby slippers
that were stolen in Returned were put up for sale
by Heritage Auction in December twenty twenty four, and the
auctioneers believed that these slippers would earn something like three
million dollars. That's right, three million dollars is where it got.
(37:12):
In the first couple of.
Speaker 3 (37:14):
Seconds of the auction opening, more than eight hundred people
placed bids, and ultimately an unknown buyer spent thirty two
point five million bucks on these making them the most
valuable piece of movie memorabilia ever to be.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Sold at auction.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
And I think we actually we talked about this story
on Strange News when it happened, because that was a
big deal when the sold, and it had a connection
to this hight story. So it's really cool to kind
of dig in and get some more of the details
surrounding this incredible, bizarre and dare we say, ridiculous story
(37:51):
of what happened to the ruby slippers.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
And this is so this is our last point. This
is so illustrative of how arbitrary value can be for memorabilia.
In nineteen eighty nine, as Jordan points out, a pair
of actual ruby encrusted ruby slippers were made as a
celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Wizard of Oz
(38:15):
film adaptation, and they were only worth about three millions,
so much less than the fake ones. This is this
is so nuts. This has been such a wild ride.
Thank you folks for tuning in and walking the yellow
brick road with us. Big thanks to our super producer
mister Max Williams, as well as Alex Williams who.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
Composed this track, of course, and thanks again to Jordan
runtag and check out his podcast Too Much Information, where
he does deep dives and all kinds of fun pop
culture stuff ranging from you know.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
I think like a multi multi part episode on the
making of.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
The film Titanic. So do give him a listen. Christ
Frasiotis and eaves. Jeff Coates here in Spirra, Jonathan Strickland
quizt hey j Mohamed Jacob's the Puzzler.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Yes, yes, Mangesh Hadakatur friend of the show. We might
have him on later. Our Pals Daily Zeitgeist, our Pals
at Ridiculous Crime. If you dig us and stories like this,
you will love them. So get thee to thy podcast
platform of choice. And I've got to tell you, I
(39:22):
always wonder which character I would be in The Wizard
of Oz.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
I think you're kind of a no, no, no, you're
a bit of a wizard man us. I think that's nice.
You've said to be a twenty five Well, I mean,
and I don't want to Oh, is it not a compliment?
It is? It is a compliment in this contest.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Then you are the version of the Wizard that comes
clean and gives out all of.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
The honorifics and all of the.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
Who do you want to be at the show?
Speaker 3 (39:52):
I don't know, man, I'm sort of a cowardly lion
type figure. I guess, or I could be a scarecrow.
I identify with both of those casts.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
I identify with the sc I think we all are
at some point in our lives. Well, thanks so much, man,
Everybody tune in next week. We've got more ridiculous history
on the way.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 3 (40:16):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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