A Brief History of Dorothy Gale’s Slippers
December 12th, 2009 | Published in Arts & Culture, Fashion
By Brett Butler
The infamous ruby slippers Judy Garland wears in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz weren’t supposed to be ruby at all. In L. Frank Baum’s book, Dorothy wore silver slippers. Producers changed the color because ruby would show up better on the movie screen.
Seven pair of ruby slippers were made for the film. They were designed by Gilbert Adrian. The four pairs of shoes used in the film were originally white silk pumps from the Innes Shoe Company in Los Angeles, and bear an embossed gold or silver stamp, or an embroidered cloth label, on the white kid leather sole of the right shoe. At the time, many movie studios used plain white silk shoes because they were inexpensive and easily dyed.
It is likely that most of the shoes worn by female characters in The Wizard of Oz were plain Innes shoes with varying heel heights, dyed to match each costume. The shoes used for Dorothy’s slippers were dyed red; then burgundy sequined organza overlays were attached to each shoe’s upper and heel. The film’s early 3-strip Technicolor process required the sequins to be darker than most red sequins found today; bright red sequins would have appeared orange on screen.
Art Deco was a popular international design movement from 1925 until 1939, affecting the decorative arts such as architecture, interior design, and industrial design, as well as the visual arts such as fashion, painting, the graphic arts and film.
Art Deco inspired bows comprised three large rectangular red glass jewels with dark-red bugle beads, outlined in orange-red glass rhinestones in silver settings. The stones and beads were sewn to a piece of red strap leather, then to the organza-covered shoe. Three pairs of the surviving slippers have orange felt glued to their soles to deaden noise.
The remaining, un-muffled pair, the smallest, was used on the feet of the dead Wicked Witch of the East and possibly for close-ups of Dorothy. Garland wore one primary pair during shooting. This pair can be seen when the Witch tries to grab them, while holding Dorothy captive at her castle, and at the film’s climax, when Dorothy taps her heels to return to Kansas.
The “sister set” to this pair is owned by Michael Shaw, who obtained them from Kent Warner in 1970. This pair can clearly be seen at the end of the film when Dorothy shows the ruby slippers to the Emerald City doorman. This pair has been missing since it was stolen from an exhibit at the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.
