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Ruby Slippers Are The “Holy Grail” For Academy’s Planned Museum

By BRIAN BROOKS | Thursday February 23, 2012 @ 1:11pm PSTTags: Academy Museum Of Motion Pictures, AMPAS, Dawn Hudson, The Wizard of Oz

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is banking on ruby-red slipper magic to rally support for its proposed Academy Museum of Motion Pictures — 70 years after the iconic shoes’ debut in The Wizard Of Oz. Dorothy’s vibrant Technicolor footwear was acquired Wednesday by a group of angel investors led by Leonardo DiCaprio, Steven Spielberg and Terry Semel and is one of only four pair known to exist. They are primed to be both a centerpiece and rallying cry for the planned museum, located adjacent to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  ”(Academy CEO) Dawn Hudson spearheaded the effort to get the shoes, and DiCaprio, Spielberg and Semel stepped in to help,” an Academy spokesperson tells Deadline. “The slippers were a passion for Dawn because she knows the significance they have with the moviegoing public.”

If a price tag can be attributed to sentimental value, then the slippers — known as “The Witch’s Shoes,” considered the finest of the known surviving samples — have cemented their place over the decades. The pair, given their name because they’re the ones the Wicked Witch of the East wore when Dorothy’s house fell on her, sold at auction in 1981 for $12,000, and another surviving pair fetched a cool $666,000 in 2000. In December, Moviepropcollectors.com said the shoes were set to go under the gavel with an estimated value between $2 million-$3 million. Asked about what DiCaprio, Spielberg and the others ponied up, the Academy spokesperson only would say the shoes were “very, very valuable.” The shoes that will one day go on display in the museum space now known as LACMA West are the ones Dorothy, played by Judy Garland, clicked three times at the end of the movie, repeating, “There’s no place like home,” magically sending her back to Kansas.

Whether the slippers will serve as a fundraising catalyst for the 300,000-square-foot space located at Wilshire and Fairfax remains to be seen. But AMPAS is clearly using the high-profile acquisition as a yellow brick road for raising both the museum’s profile and potential donor dollars. ”These shoes are a holy grail and a great way to kick off letting the public know the types of [memorabilia] that will be available when we do open,” the spokesperson says. “They were tucked away for a long time and to have them back here in Los Angeles is a relief to everyone.”

Will “angel donors” continue to pick up valuable movie artifacts for the museum? “This would be a dream come true,” the spokesperson says. “We’re going to click our heels three times that this good fortune continues.”

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Leonardo DiCaprio & Steven Spielberg Help Purchase ‘Wizard Of Oz’ Ruby Slippers For Movie Academy

By NIKKI FINKE, Editor in Chief | Wednesday February 22, 2012 @ 1:12pm PSTTags: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wizard of Oz

Beverly Hills, CA – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has acquired a pair of the iconic ruby slippers from “The Wizard of Oz” for the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Actor Leonardo DiCaprio led a group of “angel donors” whose gifts to the Academy Foundation enabled the purchase. In addition to the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, a component fund of CCF Environmental and Humanitarian Causes, donations came from producer-director Steven Spielberg and Terry Semel, co-chair of LACMA and the former chairman and CEO of Warner Bros. and Yahoo!, along with other donors.

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HAMMOND: Could Rachel Weisz Be Back In The Oscar Game?

By PETE HAMMOND | Friday August 5, 2011 @ 10:46am PDTTags: Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, The Whistleblower, The Wizard of Oz, Toronto Film Festival
Pete Hammond

With the recent announcement of selections for this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Rachel Weisz discovered she is going to be there with two films: The Deep Blue Sea and Fernando Meirelles’ ensembler 360. But it was her acclaimed performance in another Toronto film — from the 2010 fest — that she most wanted to discuss when I recently caught up with her.

After its 2010 Toronto premiere, buzz started on awards prospects for The Whistleblower star Weisz’s intense and emotional performance. But after the fest, filmmakers went back into editing and toned down the harrowing rape scenes and further shaped the movie, which finally gets released today through the Samuel Goldwyn Company, which hopes the awards buzz will pick up again, especially if the distributor can get any box office traction in a crowded marketplace for small movies like this one.

Although it received mixed reviews after its Toronto unveiling, there was near-unanimous praise for Weisz’s portrayal of real-life Nebraska cop Kathryn Bolkovac, who took a job as a peacekeeper in post-war Bosnia only to uncover a web of corruption, sex trafficking and United Nations cover-ups when she arrived there in 1999. The real story turned out to be too intense to show the way it really was. “In fact the rape scene was cut down after the Toronto screening by the studio, which I completely understand,” she says. “It would be just too harrowing for people to watch. What actually happened was so much worse. I mean the stories I could tell you from the first person who encountered these young women. That was the ‘light’ version if you can believe that. But it isn’t a documentary, you don’t want to destroy people. You just want to illuminate something that actually happened that was a hundred times worse.” Read More »

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‘Wicked’ To Cast Movie Spell For Universal: Creators Meeting With Hollywood Directors

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Friday July 9, 2010 @ 3:59pm PDTTags: Alice in Wonderland, Broadway, Directors, Fairy Tales, James Mangold, JJ Abrams, Mamma Mia!, Marc Platt, Oz, Rob Marshall, Ryan Murphy, The Wizard of Oz, Universal Pictures
Mike Fleming

100.0EXCLUSIVE: The smash hit stage musical Wicked is taking its first formative steps toward the movie screen. I’m told the musical’s producer Marc Platt, book writer Winnie Holzman, and songwriter Stephen Schwartz have begun meeting with filmmakers. Insiders confirm that JJ … Read More »

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