The Audrey Hepburn movie costume that sold for $4.5 million
There are few objects in the world as desirable in terms of collectable memorabilia as the props and costumes from some of the biggest movies and TV shows. Fans of the entertainment industry have dispensed with their hard-earned cash in order to own some of their favourite cinematic moments for the rest of their lives.
Film fanatics often spend rather exorbitant figures on collector’s items, no matter the size or significance. While such items eventually become part of an entirely different world, at one point, they were merely a piece of a fictional narrative with a sense of time and place.
But that’s precisely why fans are willing to spend much money on them, to get closer to the story and the culture surrounding it. Over the years, there have been several eye-watering prices spent on costumes. Take, for instance, Maria’s dress worn by Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, which sold for $676,000, or even the $3million spent on the lion costume from The Wizard of Oz.
But way ahead at the top of the pile of most expensive movie costumes ever bought is the dress that Audrey Hepburn wore in the 1964 musical comedy-drama My Fair Lady. It was back in 2011 when someone dispensed $4.5million to take the Cecil Beaton-designed dress home.
The film was adapted from Lerner and Loewe’s 1956 stage musical, which itself was based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play Pygmalion. George Cukor directed My Fair Lady from a screenplay by Alan Jay Lerner. It sees Hepburn take on the role of Eliza Doolittle, which Julie Andrews played in the stage version.
Doolittle is a lower-class Cockney flower seller who hears a high and mighty language professor claim that he would be able to teach her to speak “proper English” and therefore assimilate her into the aristocracy of wealthy Edwardian London society. Rex Harrison plays Professor Henry Higgins, reprising his stage musical role.
The film is something of a cultural artefact and won eight Academy Awards, including ‘Best Actor’, ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Picture’. It’s really all about Hepburn in My Fair Lady, which makes the $4.5m spent on her dress seem a little more reasonable, even if so many of us would not spend even a tiny portion of it on anything.
Check out the trailer for My Fair Lady below to catch a glimpse of Audrey Hepburn’s $4.5 million dress.
