Christie’s will be holding an exclusive sale of Elizabeth Taylor’s jewelry from Dec. 3 to Dec. 17. Some 950 pieces will be available for bidding on its online gallery.

A selection of 2,000 items from what some call “The Crown Jewels of Hollywood,” Elizabeth Taylor’s incredible collection, will hit the Christie’s auction block this December. A special, online-only component of the sale includes more than 500 pieces of fine and costume jewelry for the online-only sale, including exceptional Art Deco-era jewelry and an array of signed jewels by Cartier, Chanel, Christian Dior, and Ruser, among others.

The sale will run from Dec. 3 to Dec. 17. While Christie’s has offered bidding online since 2006, this is the first time the auction house will host an exclusive online addition to a private collection sale.

The entire Collection of Elizabeth Taylor sale mirrors the incredible offering of top designer gowns, coats, capes, handbags and designer goods that will be featured in the live auction.

The 33.19-carat Krupp Diamond set in a ring.

The pear-shaped, 69.41-carat Taylor-Burton Diamond.

I met Elizabeth Taylor twice, once at an event in Roanoke, Va., where she spoke about her film, the children’s fantasy, “The Blue Bird,” from 1971. The second time was when she spoke at a Belk’s store in Charlotte, N.C., which still sells an Elizabeth Taylor “White Diamonds” line of cosmetics.

Both times she was impeccably dressed, although not quite so lavishly at the Virginia event, which she attended with then-husband and U.S. Senator from Virginia, John Warner.

She traveled to the Belk promotions with her small white dog, which she petted while responding with quick wit to audience questions. She wore a necklace with a diamond big enough to sink a canoe.

The 50-carat La Peregrina Pearl had once been owned by Queen Mary I of England.

Richard Burton—her fourth and fifth husband—said when he met her in 1952, “She was unquestionably gorgeous. I can think of no other word to describe a combination of plentitude, frugality, abundance, tightness. She was lavish. She was a dark unyielding largesse.”

Taylor loved jewelry passionately. At her death, her jewelry collection was estimated to be worth $150 million. Burton gave her three of her most famous jewels, including the 33.19-carat Krupp Diamond, which she wore every day as a ring. He also gave her the pear-shaped Taylor-Burton Diamond, a whopping 69.41-carat gem.

Burton presented her with the 50-carat La Peregrina Pearl as a Valentine’s gift in 1969. The pearl had once been owned by Queen Mary I of England, who ruled from 1553-1558.

Taylor wrote a book about her jewelry collection, “My Love Affair with Jewelry,” published in 2002

The Elizabeth Taylor diamond (33.19 carats, D color, potentially internally flawless) has an estimated value of $2,500,000-$3,500,000.

Taylor wrote a book about her jewelry collection, “My Love Affair with Jewelry,” published in 2002 with photographs by John Bigelow Taylor (no relation to Elizabeth, but a specialist in jewelry photography).

In addition to jewelry, Taylor’s gowns and accessories always commanded attention. She gave some of the gowns and costumes from her film career to Debbie Reynolds, and some were sold during the recent auction of items from Reynold’s extensive collection.

Items up for bid in the online-only collection that starts Dec. 3, include:

• A gold, sapphire and Mississippi pearl hummingbird brooch by Ruser, valued at between $2,000 and $3,000.
• A multi-gem ring by Chaumet valued at up to $500.
• A coral and tigers eye fish bracelet by Van Cleef & Arpels valued at from $1,000 to $1,500.

Costume jewelry up for sale includes:

• A Navajo silver and turquoise squash blossom necklace valued at $400 to $600.
• An Art Deco Bracelet by Jac expected to bring from $100 to $200.

Considering the way prices have exceeded estimates at auctions of celebrity related items in the last few years, some of these prices are sure to be exceeded.

On the other hand, the really expensive jewels up for sale offline include The Elizabeth Taylor diamond, rectangular-cut diamond ring of 33.19 carats, D color, potentially internally flawless, with an estimated value of $2,500,000-$3,500,000.

Allan Maurer is a Worthologist who specializes in Hollywood and movie memorabilia and the publisher of the web site BestFilmFests.

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WorthPoint—Discover Your Hidden Wealth

Monroe’s “Seven Year Itch” dress is expected to rake in between $1 million and $2 million.

Actress and longtime movie memorabilia collector Debbie Reynolds is selling more than 300 costumes and props in the largest such auction in 30 years, beginning June 18, to raise money for the planned Hollywood Motion Picture Museum.

“My lifetime dream has been to assemble and preserve the history of the Hollywood film industry,” Reynolds said. “Hollywood has been an enormous part of my life, as I know it has been for countless fans all over the world.

“This collection represents a lifetime of collecting Hollywood artifacts and this is a rare opportunity to own a piece of Hollywood History for those who love the movies as much as I do.”

Reynolds acquired many of the items after MGM consigned them to an auction house decades ago, sorting through 300,000 costumes and props.

Marilyn Monroe’s white dress from the subway grate scene in “The Seven Year Itch” is expected to bring between $2 and $3 million.

The iconic scene that makes this dress a must-have item for serious collectors of Hollywood memorabilia.

Reynolds labored for years trying to establish a museum to house her extensive collection, but debts mounted, forcing her to sell the collection. She has said “it is the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” but expressed the hope that some who purchase movie treasures will loan them to the museum for display afterward.

If you’re in Beverly Hills, you have until June 17 to see most of the costumes for free at the Paley Center for Media on the corner of North Beverly Drive and Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills.

Reynold’s Handpicked Collection:

Richard Burton's costume from "Cleopatra."

Charleton Heston's costume from "Ben Hur."

Claude Raines' costume from "Casablanca."

Among the items that will be crossing the block are from some of the most iconic movies in Hollywood history, including a pair of Judy Garland’s red slippers and cotton dress from “The Wizard of Oz,” Charlie Chaplin’s bowler, the hat that matched the gown Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) made from green draperies in “Gone With the Wind,” Richard Burton’s costume from “Cleopatra,” Marilyn Monroe costumes from “River of No Return” and “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” Charlton Heston’s costume from “Ben-Hur,” Marlon Brando’s costume from “Desiree,” not to mention Monroe’s famed “subway grate” dress from “The Seven Year Itch.”

Judy Garland's costume from "The Wizard of Oz."

Julie Andrews costume from "The Sound of Music."

Elizabeth Taylor's costume from "National Velvet."

Other costumes and props in the auction were used by:

• Julie Andrews in “Star”;
• Fred Astaire “Belle of New York”;
• James Cagney in”Yankee Doodle Dandy” and “Strawberry Blonde”;
• Judy Garland in”Ziegfeld Follies” and “Presenting Lilly Mars”;
• Rita Hayworth in “Loves of Carmen”;
• Katherine Hepburn in”Little Minister”;
• Marilyn Monroe in”Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” “Don’t Bother to Knock,” and “Ticket to Tomahawk”;
• Mary Pickford in”Rosita” and “Secrets”;
• Ginger Rogers in “Roxie Hart” and “Black Widow”;
• Jane Russell in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”;
• Lana Turner in “Weekend at the Waldorf”;
• Mae West in “Every Day’s a Holiday”

The auction will also include arm chairs and a hardware store display form “Gone with the Wind,” paintings of Garbo and Marion Davies, and more. Historical memorabilia dealer Profiles in History will auction items starting June 18, with two more auctions to follow on Dec. 6, and next spring. The December sale, “Selections from the Collection of the Debbie Reynolds Hollywood Motion Picture Museum,” will be conducted at the Le Meridien Hotel, 465 S La Cienega Blvd., Beverly Hills, Ca. Reynolds will attend an auction preview, from 6 to 9 p.m., Friday, Dec. 5, at the Le Meridien Hotel.

Online bidding for these auctions also will be conducted through Julian Entertainment. Printed catalogs are available for $15 each through Autrographs.com. Free digital catalogs are also available by calling 800.996.3977.

Allan Maurer is a Worthologist who specializes in Hollywood and movie memorabilia and is the publisher of the web site BestFilmFests.

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WorthPoint—Discover Your Hidden Wealth

“Wings”
The 1927 Paramount release starring Clara Bow—the “It” girl—received the award for Best Production at the first Academy Award ceremony in 1929. The Academy itself possesses one of only two known original Style A one sheets for “Wings.” When a post-awards 1929 reissue came up for auction in 2006 it brought in more than $18,000, while a unique 26″ X 40.25″ Style D, the only one known to exist, auctioned for more than $86,000 in 2005.

“All Quiet on the Western Front”
This powerful anti-war film was named Best Picture at the third annual Academy Awards in 1930. (Two Academy Award ceremonies were held in 1930—one in April, and a second in November.) A very rare 22″ X 28″ half sheet featuring a shell-shocked Lew Ayres brought more than $6,500 at auction in 2008.

“Cimarron”
The 1931 RKO release was the first Western to win an Oscar. An 11″ X 14″ lobby card of stars Richard Dix and Irene Dunne auctioned for more than $3,000 in 2007.

“Grand Hotel”
MGM’s star-studded feature took the 1932 Best Picture award. The extremely rare one sheet (27″ X 41″) sold for $48,000 in 2006.

“It Happened One Night”
The Frank Capra classic starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert was the first film to sweep the five major Oscars, including Best Actor, Actress, Picture, Director and Screenplay. The only known 3 sheet (41″ X 81″) Style B sold for $35,850 in 2008.

“Mutiny on the Bounty”
The 1935 Best Picture winner was the only film to ever have three different actors nominated for Best Actor: Charles Laughton, Clark Gable, and Franchot Tone. Paper from this movie has not fetched huge prices in the past, but is on the increase. A one sheet (27″ X 41″) sold for better than $2,500 in 2002, while a 14″ X 36″ insert sold for nearly $3,000 in 2008.

“Gone With the Wind”
The 1939 Oscar winner is one of the most beloved movies of all time—and its paper fetches some of the highest prices in the marketplace. An original Style C one sheet showing Scarlet running through a burning Atlanta sold for $20,700 in 2006, and a rare “plume” style CF 27″ X 41″ one sheet sold for better than $8,000 in 2008.

“Mrs. Miniver”
Greer Garson won Best Actress for this 1942 MGM hit, which also took Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Screenplay and Supporting Actress (Teresa Wright). One sheets are rare for this film but 22″ X 28″ half sheets are selling in the $3-5,000 range.

“Casablanca”
Original posters from the 1943 Best Picture winner consistently bring some of the highest prices in the marketplace. An original release one sheet (27″ X 41″) brought $25,300 in 2005, while a Style B half sheet (22″ X 28″), a rare version showing all the film’s main characters, sold for nearly $39,000 last year.

“Lawrence of Arabia”
One sheets (27″ X 41″) of the “camel” Style A with art by Howard Terpning—the most sought after poster of the 1962 Best Picture winner—brought $11,000 and $14,000 at two auctions in 2008.

Allan Maurer is a Worthologist who specializes in Hollywood and movie memorabilia.

WorthPoint—Discover Your Hidden Wealth

The Academy Award of Merit, otherwise universally known as the Oscar.

Known universally as Oscar, the statuette stands more than a foot high (13.5 inches) and is made of gold-plated Britannia metal by R. S. Owens and Co. in Chicago. Designed in 1929 by MGM art director Cedric Gibbons and sculpted by George Stanley, Oscar is an art-deco image of a knight standing on a reel of film, hands gripping a Crusader’s sword. The five spokes of the reel represent the five branches of the academy: actors, directors, producers, technicians and writers.

Mexican film director Emilio “El Indio” Fernández reportedly posed naked for the original design.

For the first three years, the awards were made of solid bronze and then changed to Britannia metal, a stronger metal that is an alloy of tin, copper and antimony, much like pewter. After casting, the statues are polished, and then plated with a series of metals: copper, nickel and silver. The final plating is 24K gold. Oscars are believed to contain more gold than any other major award statuette.

During World War II when metals were scarce, the academy distributed Oscar statues made of plaster. When the war ended, the plaster awards were swiftly replaced with authentic metal statuettes. All the plaster substitutes were believed destroyed until one surfaced recently in the academy’s vault.

The only change in the design of Oscar over the years has been in the base. Originally, it was slightly smaller and made of Belgian black marble. Since 1945, the base has been slightly taller and made of spun brass plated in black nickel.

Unique Oscars

A few unique Oscars have been created over the years. Ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s 1937 Oscar statuette sported a movable jaw, in honor of his Charlie McCarthy dummy. Walt Disney received a standard Oscar statuette and seven miniatures for “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” in 1938. Shirley Temple received a miniature “junior” Oscar in 1934 at the age of 6.

Officially, the statue is named the Academy Award of Merit, but everyone, even the academy, calls him Oscar. Legend has it that he received this name from Margaret Herrick, the academy’s longtime librarian and later executive director, who nicknamed him after a favorite uncle.

Hollywood columnist Sidney Skolsky first used the name in print in his column about Katharine Hepburn’s first Best Actress win at the sixth awards presentation in 1934. The academy itself didn’t use the nickname officially until 1939.

The academy is fiercely protective of Oscar, posting this warning on its Web site: “The Oscar statuette is the copyrighted property of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the statuette and the phrases Academy Award(s)’ and ‘Oscar(s)’ are registered trademarks under the laws of the United States and other countries.”

All nominees for Oscars since 1950 have been required to sign a legal document requiring them and their heirs “not to sell or otherwise dispose of” the statuette, or if they can no longer keep it, to sell it back to the academy for $1.

Selling Oscars

Whenever an Oscar comes up for sale, the academy’s legal department moves swiftly to identify the origin of the award and, if possible, block its sale.

The heirs of the Mary Pickford estate recently came into conflict with the academy when they tried to sell one of the Oscars awarded to the silent film star. Pickford won the Best Actress Oscar, one of the first ever awarded, for her performance in the 1929 melodrama “Coquette.” In 1976, she received a second honorary Oscar for her contributions to the film industry, including cofounding United Artists and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The 1929 Oscar, estimated to fetch at least $500,000 at auction, should fall outside the 1950 time limits, but the academy counters that the agreement Pickford signed for her 1976 award also covered the earlier statue.

Orson Welles’ Best Screenplay Oscar from “Citizen Kane” when it was up for auction.

Orson Welles’ daughter, Beatrice, had similar difficulties trying to sell her father’s Best Screenplay Oscar for the 1941 classic, “Citizen Kane.” The academy sued her in 2003, saying that she had signed an agreement in the 1980s when she received a replacement Oscar not to sell it or the original if it was ever found. She recovered the original and put it up for auction at Sotheby’s, but the academy blocked the sale.

The courts ruled that the agreement in this instance did not cover the heirs of the award’s recipient, and Beatrice later sold the Oscar to a charitable foundation. It in turn put Oscar up for auction and the statue finally went on the block in December 2007 at Sotheby’s, estimated to bring in $800,000 to $1.2 million (up from estimated $400,000 in 2003). However, it was withdrawn when bids failed to meet its reserve price.

Some still reach collectors

Despite the best efforts of the academy, some pre-1950 Oscars do reach the gavel:

• The award for Best Picture, 1941, “How Green was My Valley,” sold in 2004 for $95,600.

• Ronald Colman’s 1947 Best Actor award for “A Double Life” sold in 2002 for $175,000.

• Bette Davis’ 1938 Best Actress award for “Jezebel” sold in 2001 for $578,000.

• Clark Gable’s 1934 Best Actor award for “It Happened One Night” sold in 1996 for $607,500.

• The Oscar awarded to “Gone with the Wind” for Best Picture in 1939 sold in 1999 for $1.54 million.

• Steven Spielberg is known to have bought the statuettes awarded to Clark Gable and Bette Davis at auction and subsequently returned them to the academy.

Clark Gable accepting one of his three Oscars (“It Happened One Night,” “Mutiny on the Bounty” and “Gone with the Wind.”)

Fifty awards are cast each year by R. S. Owens. Imperfect casts are destroyed. Any unused awards are placed in the academy’s vault until the next year. All these measures keep Oscar one of the most sought-after and hardest-to-find collectibles in both the awards statues and movie memorabilia categories.

Image and name of Oscar © A.M.P.A.S.

Allan Maurer is a Worthologist who specializes in movie and Hollywood memorabilia

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Goodbye Mr. Science Fiction,
Dr. Acula and the Sci-Fi Man

By Allan Maurer

Way back in 1957, at the advanced age of 10, I bought a 35-cent magazine at a small town drugstore’s magazine rack called Famous Monsters of Filmland, the second issue, edited by Forrest J. Ackerman, who died Dec. 4, 2008.

That magazine changed my life in more ways than one.

It replayed an incident in Ackerman’s own life, which he often retold. When about the same age as I was discovering FM, Forry saw an early copy of the world’s first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, on the newsstand in 1926. He described the moment this way: “It said take me home, little boy; you’ll love me.” And he did.

Forry became science fiction’s number-one fan, winning a Hugo (science fiction’s highest award) the first year they were presented as just that, the number-one fan. He coined the term “sci-fi,” which many people in the science fiction community dislike for its connotation of junky fantasy that is nothing like literary SF. But it caught on with the general public and press to such an extent that it’s firmly implanted now.

He called himself FJA and Dr. Acula, and others called him Mr. Science Fiction. He played cameo roles in films such as “The Howling,” and “The Time Travelers,” among many others.
Ackerman’s pun-crazed articles about horror and science fiction movies and their stars in FM were on the juvenile side, to say the least, but he illustrated them with an amazing assortment of stills, posters and artifacts from his own vast, 300,000-item collection. It sparked my own lust for movie memorabilia.

While I never did it for money, at least not for decades (I collect as an investment now as well as for pleasure), I never lost a penny on movie memorabilia. Even when I sold items for a tenth of what they would bring now, I made 10 times my own initial investment.

I recently bid on and won a linen-backed glossy still from Forry’s own collection, much of which he auctioned to pay legal and medical bills. It’s from Anne Bancroft’s only foray into the horror movie genre, “Gorilla at Large,” showing her held by said gorilla and has “Oh Forry, you tickle so,” written in Forry’s own hand (and also came with two other stills and his very own file folder). I paid $60 for it, and it was one of the less expensive items the dealer sold in that auction of stills from Forry’s files.

I particularly like it because it unites my substantial Anne Bancroft collection with my equally substantial collection of science fiction and horror movie collectibles, which range from posters, lobby cards and stills, to toys and assorted odds and ends. Not only that, I remember seeing that still in FM so many years ago, not least because of the adolescent excitement Bancroft’s figure stirred in me.

The connection to Ackerman’s FM, which as much as anything is responsible for my collecting in the first place, is equally pleasing to me. I met him several times at science fiction conventions over the years, shaking his hand, on which he wore one of his most prized collectibles, the Dracula ring that Bela Lugosi wore portraying the vampiric count. Forry’s legacy lives on in the work of many people in the science fiction, fantasy, and film worlds.

Stephen King, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, John Landis and many, many others loved his magazine and freely admitted Forry’s influence, and they’re only a few among thousands. I started my professional writing career publishing short stories in science fiction pulp magazines (Fantastic) and magazines about SF films (Starlog), and even when I moved up in the world to major national slick magazines, I published most often in OMNI, which ran both leading edge science stories and science fiction. Even my work for non-genre publications often covers SF subjects, from film and book reviews to assorted related topics.

Many of the obituaries of Ackerman note that he died without heirs. That’s not true. He had many thousands of heirs. I know, because I’m one.

Some links about Forry:

L.A. Times blog

The Wikipedia entry on Ackerman

His My Space Page