When The Wizard of Oz was filmed in 1938, Judy Garland wore several blue-and-white gingham dresses in her role as Dorothy Gale. Four of them are know to exist. One particular dress that she wore during the scene in which Dorothy confronts the Wicked Witch of the West went missing for fifty years! The dress, along with the white blouse that goes with it, was on the verge of being thrown out during a clean out at Catholic University of America when it was rescued, but then sat for several more months before anyone checked it out.
The university sent the dress to Bonhams to go up for auction. There, director of popular culture Helen Hall went to work to authenticate the dress. She studied the dress inch by inch and watched the movie frame by frame, and concluded that it was authentic. But as soon as the dress was announced to be included in the May 24th auction, a lawsuit popped up to stop it. This dress is now in limbo until the case is settled, but it might fetch between $800,000 and $1.2 million. Read the story of the dress and its pending sale at Atlas Obscura.
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