World's largest collection of iconic Hollywood costumes at auction

  • June 05, 2011 19:16

  • Email
Marilyn Monroe wearing the iconic dress with its skirt billowing over a subway grate in the 1954 film The Seven Year Itch.

Perhaps the most famous costume in screen history, Marilyn Monroe's ‘subway’ dress from The Seven-Year Itch comes to the auction block this June with an estimated value of $1-2 million. 

The two-part sale, to be held in June and Dec. 2011, by California-based dealer Profiles in History, includes Monroe's halter-style dress with its memorably high-flying skirt. The dress may well surpass the $1.26 million paid 12 years ago for the film star's slinky sequined number worn when she sang 'Happy Birthday Mr. President."

Collected by actress Debbie Reynolds over the course of 50 years, the entire collection contains over 3,500 costumes, 20,000 original photographs, several thousand original movie posters, original costume sketches and hundreds of key props from film history.

Among the highlights are Judy Garland's original blue and white Dorothy "test" dress from 1939's The Wizard of Oz; Charlton Heston's signature tunic and robe worn in Ben-Hur of 1959; and the famous green-velvet “drapery” dress hat with bird adornment worn by Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’ Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939).

Reynolds focused on Academy Award-winning films including My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music and Casablanca; the industry's top designers such as Travilla, Travis Banton and Edith Head; and pieces worn by film icons like Grace Kelly, Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Charlton Heston, Greta Garbo, Elizabeth Taylor, Bette Davis, Gene Kelly, Richard Burton and more.

“I heard the news that MGM was going to sell their inventory of costumes and props,” says Reynolds on how she started collecting, “I went everyday for weeks and focused on purchasing the costumes and props of Academy Award winning films. It soon turned into an obsession. Until now!  I've concluded that my dream of having a museum cannot be fulfilled, so I have decided to share my fabulous collection with other collectors.”

The first 700 lots from "Debbie Reynolds - The Auction" will be offered by Profiles in History on June 18 at the Paley Center for the Media, 465 N. Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills, Calif. Previews will be held from noon to 5 p.m. on June 4-5, 8-12 and 15-17

 


  • Email

More News Feed Headlines

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) Sunset, 1830-5.

After 13 Years, ARTFIXdaily to Cease Daily News Service

  • ArtfixDaily / August 15th, 2022

ARTFIXdaily will end weekday e-newsletter service after 13 years of publishing art world press releases, events and ...

Read More...
Einar and Jamex de la Torre, Critical Mass, 2002 (Courtesy of the Cheech Marin Collection and Riverside Art Museum).

Inaugural Exhibition at The Cheech Highlights Groundbreaking Chicano Artists

  • ArtfixDaily / July 7th, 2022

One of the nation’s first permanent spaces dedicated to showcasing Chicano art and culture opened on June ...

Read More...
Jacob Lawrence,.  .  .  is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?—Patrick Henry,1775 , Panel 1, 1955, from Struggle: From the History of the American People, 1954–56, egg tempera on hardboard.  Collection of Harvey and Harvey-Ann Ross.  © 2022 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Crystal Bridges Explores the U.S. Constitution Through Art in New Exhibition 'We the People: The Radical Notion of Democracy'

  • ArtfixDaily / July 7th, 2022

Original print of the U.S. Constitution headlines exhibition sponsored by Ken Griffin (who purchased it for $43.2 ...

Read More...
Salvador Dalí (1904–1989), Christ of St John of the Cross, 1951, oil on canvas © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums Collection

Dalí / El Greco Side-by-Side Exhibit Prompts: 'Are They Really Paintings of the Same Thing?'

  • ArtfixDaily / July 6th, 2022

From July 9 to December 4, 2022, The Auckland Project in the U.K. will unite two Spanish masterpieces from British ...

Read More...

Related Press Releases

Related Events

Goto Calendar