![]() ![]() “I was curious what was inside and opened the bag. Its exact whereabouts were forgotten until July 2021, when Matt Ripa, the operations coordinator, stumbled upon it in a bag sitting atop the faculty mailboxes, with a note from the retired department chair saying he had found it in his office. Some drama department employees may have known where it was, but most spoke of it more as a legend. The delicate blouse, which the film’s seamstress complained of having to repair daily, has a tear in the sleeve.Īfter Hartke’s death, in 1986, the dress fell through the cracks at the university. It has a fitted bodice and a full skirt, with a handwritten “JUDY GARLAND 4223” label sewn inside the dress. The Catholic University dress is the one Garland wore in the scene where Dorothy faces off with the Wicked Witch in her castle, according to Bonhams. ( Bonhams also sold Bert Lahr’s original Cowardly Lion costume for over $3 million in 2014.) The other complete set fetched $480,000 at Julien’s Auctions in 2012, and $1.6 million at Bonhams in 2015. A 1979 Washington Star article profiling the “showbiz priest” cited in the suit notes that all gifts to the priest become the monastery, university, or drama school’s property, “which includes Judy Garland’s dress in The Wizard of Oz.”įive of the pinafores worn by Garland in the film have survived but only two have the matching blouse. The university argues that because Hartke was a Dominican priest, he took a vow of poverty, which means he kept no personal property. Judge Paul Gardephe, of the District Court for the Southern District of New York, granted her a preliminary injunction blocking the dress’s sale, as well as that of a cream-colored organdy blouse also worn by Garland in the film.Ĭostume worn by Judy Garland as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (1939). As his closest living relative, Barbara Hartke claims the dress belongs to her, not the university, and that it has no right to sell. His niece Barbara Ann Hartke, 81, filed a lawsuit earlier this month seeking to stop the auction. But a judge halted the sale before it ever happened.Ĭatholic University in Washington, D.C., had consigned the dress as part of the auction house’s “ Classic Hollywood: Film and Television” sale in the hope of raising money to establish a new film acting program.īut the dress belonged to Catholic priest Gilbert Hartke, the founder of the university’s drama department. The blue-and-white gingham pinafore that Judy Garland wore as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz was poised to make history today when it hit the auction block at Bonhams Los Angeles with an estimated price of $800,000 and $1.2 million. ![]()
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