As seen on screen
Words | Virginia Blackburn Fans of the silver screen now have another reason to pursue their hobby – in some cases, that silver can be turned to gold Film memorabilia has become big business. In December 2006, the black evening dress worn by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s sold for £467,000 through Christie’s, while Bonhams sold the late Sir Alec Guinness’s [...]
Words | Virginia Blackburn
Fans of the silver screen now have another reason to pursue
their hobby – in some cases, that silver can be turned to gold
alt="The £467,000 black Givenchy dress made specially for Audrey Hepburn for Breakfast at Tiffany’s">
Film memorabilia has become big business. In
December 2006, the black evening dress worn
by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s
sold for £467,000 through Christie’s, while
Bonhams sold the late Sir Alec Guinness’s Obi-
Wan Kenobi’s cloak (the Jedi guru of Star Wars)
for £54,000 last March. (Before anyone realised what it was
worth, the agency that owned it had even hired it out as
fancy dress.) In that same sale, one of Tom Baker’s Doctor
Who costumes went for £24,600, and a Batman and Robin
outfit worn in Only Fools and Horses fetched £10,200 – not
bad for a get-up that must have cost way less to make.
It’s an area that has rocketed over the last 20 years.
Previously, many props and costumes were destroyed after
the film had been made, but all this changed in the late
1970s with the advent of Star Wars. This was the first film
to utilise merchandising on a massive scale in the way
almost all blockbusters do today.
alt="A £60,000 Superman suit, on a mannequin and worn by Christopher Reeve">
Within a few years the auction houses had got in on the
act and specialist dealers began to appear. Interest in the
field is intense and prices mirror this. For example, whereas
two decades ago a dinner jacket worn by Humphrey
Bogart would have cost about £300, these days it would
more likely be £300,000, although actual sales figures are
almost impossible to predict. Anything associated with
truly iconic figures, such as Bogart, Marilyn Monroe and
Audrey Hepburn, almost make their own prices these days,
such is the huge interest they command.
Carey Wallace, who set up the Film and Memorabilia
department for Christie’s, still acts as their consultant. “The
first general film sale I did was in May 1988,” she recalls.
“The phenomenal publicity we received from the sale of
Marilyn Monroe’s Some Like It Hot dress in particular, which
sold for £18,000, meant that we were able to concentrate
on specialist film auctions from then on. Previously, the
[Charlie] Chaplin sale, held in 1987, came about as a result
of getting two Chaplin collections in. One comprised
all types of Chaplin memorabilia, from toys, advertising
goods and posters, and so on the back of this I got the
Chaplin hat and cane, which sold for £75,000 and boots,
which went for £35,000.”
But these really massive prices apply only to the very
top end of the market – to ultra-famous figures and
films. There is a considerably cheaper side to this area of
collecting, whereby you can buy authentic film props for
less than £100, although these are exceedingly unlikely to
see price rises on a similar scale.
“Collectors are most interested in original props and
costumes,” explains Dave Farthing, who runs the film
memorabilia website Movie Bits. “Anything from
a Stars Wars film will sell, and Indiana Jones is also
extremely popular. However, you can get much
cheaper, authenticated goods. Some studios sell the
props on through auction houses and eBay – this
is a practice that was virtually unheard of as
recently as 10 years ago.”
Obviously these are not the items that
will be worth big bucks. A prop held by a
minor figure in, for example, an Indiana
Jones film will be worth nothing like
as much as anything carted about by
Harrison Ford himself. But they can be fun
to own and not massively expensive, either.
On the Movie Bits website there is, among
other items, a pygmy skull from The Mummy
Returns for £249 and a selection of swords
starting at only £89.
Stephen Lane runs the Prop Store of London, another
specialist dealership, which has a website, gallery and
warehouses open to visitors, as well as an outlet in
California. Among his recent items were a clapperboard
from the 2006 remake of Casino Royale and a witch’s
knife from Stardust. “A lot of collectors go into the area
after watching a specific film and realising they want to
own the object on the screen,” he says. “It’s not unusual
for them to have a home entertainment system and
get a real buzz from freeze-framing the DVD at the
exact moment it shows the hero holding the object
they have in their hand or framed on the wall.”
Other popular film franchises for collectors are, he
says, the Bond films – one of Sean Connery’s dinner
jackets from Thunderball sold in the 2007 Bonhams sale
for £33,600 – and Batman and Robin.
And while it is usually the items associated with
the stars that fetch the highest prices, that is not
always the case. “I sometimes sell Storm Trooper helmets
from the Star Wars films which go for about
£20,000,” says Lane. “They might have been
background characters, but they are instantly
recognisable, with a locked-in association
to the films. And while there might have
seemed to be thousands of them on screen,
in reality, probably only 50 to 100 were
actually made, at least half of which would
have been lost or thrown away. So they are
very rare now and worth a great deal.”
Another iconic figure is Superman – Lane
currently has a costume worn by Christopher
Reeve for sale at £60,000. He also sold a Keanu
Reeves costume from The Matrix, the buyer of which
does not wish the price to be known, but we do know it
was for “tens of thousands” of pounds.
