The Judy Garland Dress Auction

So there I was sitting in the basement of Pizza on the Park watching one of my favourite cabaret performers Nathan Martin singing his way through The Fred Astaire Songbook. Nathan’s performances are always highly sincere and extremely witty. ‘Heaven, I’m in Heaven’ Nathan sang and I was there too, eyes half closed, platform wedges kicked off, taking dainty sips of red wine and hoovering up stray pizza crumbs. Afterwards Nathan came and sat at our table and after a while the talk turned, as it often does in such settings, to my love affair with Judy Garland.

Of course, many people harbour an obsession with Judy Garland. They are drawn to the mixture of Technicolor optimism and high tragedy in her small person, those twin banners she flaunted which state, uncontrovertibly that The Show Must Go On but The End is NIgh. My love for Garland goes further than the next man’s I like to think because since childhood -when all my feelings ran so high I could barely function- I identified so intensely with my heroine’s spirit. In her performances, from my childish perspective, Garland seemed to side-step all the indignity that goes hand in hand with difficult feelings. Instead she showed them with pride, she capitalised on them, presenting her strongly felt uncertainties, her pain and her disappointments openly and with triumph, as amongst the strongest and truest things life offers. To me this was a revelation.

I looked up. Nathan was talking to me. I had the feeling he might have been speaking for some time. ‘Did you know they’re auctioning the Wizard of Oz dress next week? he inquired, ‘the gingham one, the one with the straps?’

As I left the house to attend the auction I said to Tom, ‘I think whatever that dress goes for, it would still be a really good investment.’ ‘What facts are you basing that comment on exactly?” He smiled, indulgently. This is an example of the sort of financial acumen known in this house as Susanomics. ‘There will always be some rich crazy who’ll fork out silly money for it, is what I mean,’. For a moment he looked worried, ‘Not you though,’ ‘See you later,’ I said, mischievously, twirling my keys on my thumb.

Bonhams was packed. I registered quickly and took a seat. The lots which preceded the feature item were a selection of film star autographs. “Good Luck John Wayne” ‘Regards Humphrey Bogart” that sort of thing. I have a feeling slightly naive highly prosperous people exchange these sorts of things at birthday bashes. As we drew nearer and nearer to the feature item, the atmosphere became very solemn. ‘ Lot 225,’ the auctioneer announced, ‘One of the most iconic dresses of all time.’ There was a second of silence and then the sale room was flooded with the opening bars of ‘Somewhere over the rainbow....’ As if by magic a young woman, her red hair in bunches, stepped out from behind a curtain wearing the actual dress. It was so overwhelming that tears sprang immediately into my eyes and looking round the room I saw I was not alone. The dress looked humble enough, a simple Kansas farm girl’s dress, the blue gingham darkened almost to black with age. On the front was one decorative pearl button where the strap met the bodice and at the back were dark hooks and eyes and a stitched in slip of white tape bearing the legend Judy Garland 1939.

The bidding began at ten thousand pounds. Although the room was largely made up of dealers there were a good number of people like me in the audience with their hearts (and life savings) in their mouths. We’d come to pay homage; some of us were worried we might lose control at the last minute and do something insane, at least we hoped we might. Some of these people, my people, bid up to the £50,000 mark, before shaking their heads sadly. It wasn't worth losing your house over, they muttered with the dim sense of an ending.

The bids went to the telephones, seventy thousand... seventy five.....All the Judy fans, at this point, wanted the dress to go as high as possible. It seemed like a form of respect. We willed the numbers to rise. One hundred...one hundred and twenty. Whatever that dress goes for it’s still a bargain, I thought. What does £120,000 buy you, anyway? Quite a good Ben Nicholson. Half a small flat in the Marais. A million packets of supermarket own-brand crisps. At one hundred and twenty five thousand the war between the two telephones on opposite sides of the room was over. The dress was sold. The sale room filled with deafening applause and the ordeal for Serena, the dress’s comely model, was over. I felt absolutely elated. We’d been through something together, Judy and I. I felt something very powerful - love I suppose. Dazed I went to the place on the corner for a drink. They were running a special donut promotion there. ‘These donuts are baked not fried’, the label said ‘and contain only 160 calories.’ I ordered a cappuccino and as an after-thought speared one of the little low-cal, pallid sweet treats with my finger. It’s what she would have wanted.