Per Institution policy, Smithsonian curators do not offer monetary evaluations of historical objects. The museum houses a pair of sparkling ruby slippers worn by Garland in its collections, as well as a complete costume worn by Ray Bolger as the brainless Scarecrow and an original 1938 screenplay based on L. Scholars with the university’s special collections then contacted Ryan Lintelman, a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (NMAH) and an expert in Wizard of Oz memorabilia. Photo by Maria Mazzenga / Catholic University of America Smithsonian staff members (L to R) Dawn Wallace, Sunae Park Evans and Ryan Lintelman examine the dress in June 2021. The box contained a brief message from Thomas Donahue, a now-retired drama professor who had apparently discovered the dress in the department chair’s office: “I found this.” Thrilled, Ripa and a co-worker donned gloves to snap a few photos of the faded garment before heading over to the archives. Speaking with the Washington Post’s Paul Duggan, Ripa adds, “I was shocked, holding a piece of Hollywood history right in my hands.” “I was curious what was inside and opened the trash bag and inside was a shoebox and inside the shoebox was the dress!!” he recalls in a University Archives blog post. On June 7, Ripa was cleaning out a building ahead of renovations when he found a mysterious trash bag tucked on top of the faculty mail slots. Sometimes, though, dreams really do come true. Donated to the Washington, D.C.-based university in the 1970s, the dress hadn’t been seen in years-and even department lecturer and operations coordinator Matt Ripa, who had searched high and low for the costume, had come up empty-handed. For decades, members of the Catholic University of America (CUA) drama department traded rumors about the location of a long-lost piece of movie magic: a blue-and-white checked gingham dress worn by Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale in the iconic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz.
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