Movies - Dec. 19, 1989

Garland’s Dress Sets Record: Movie fans paid more than $2.2 million for movie set furnishings and memorabilia in a series of weekend sales at Christie’s galleries in New York that set a record for a Judy Garland dress. A Garland test dress consisting of a blue pinafore and blouse used for publicity photographs for MGM’s 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz” was sold to an anonymous American collector for $19,800, almost $4,000 more than the previous record for a Garland film garment. The gallery’s pre-sale estimate of the dress’s value was $10,000 to $15,000. The sales attracted a record number of memorabilia bidders to Christie’s main gallery and its subsidiary, Christie’s East. The highest price was $275,000, fetched by a pair of Italian 18th-Century rococo walnut commodes used in the 1950s by MGM in “Susan Slept Here” and “Slightly Scarlet.” The pre-sale estimate on the lot was between $12,000 and $18,000.