I spent most of my life thinking my grandma was just a moody housewife with too many kids and no appreciation for art, then this year my dad casually mentioned that she worked on Broadway and now he’ll just randomly show me videos of her at the Tony Awards for plays she worked on Like what do you mean my grandma played an integral part in giving Meryl Streep her first major acting role. What the fuck do you mean.

I see a lot of people who think that the pair of ruby slippers that sold at auction last night were the same shoes owned by Smithsonian (they’re not!) or owned by the Academy Museum (they’re not!) or owned by any museum (they never were, but they were stolen from one!)

A thread:

https://twitter.com/popbase/status/1865562539842502732

Let’s start with the basics: there are actually five pairs of ruby slippers (that we know of!)

Two are currently in museums, two are owned by private collectors, and this pair was owned by a private collector before being sold at auction to an unknown buyer for $28 million.

Can I tell you a funny story about the Munchkinland lagoon

https://twitter.com/gothspiderbitch/status/1860851997286522938

So, Munchkinland was designed to feel like a dream where you’re both the size of an ant, but somehow also too big for the town. Everything is supposed to feel a little bit “off”, a little bit artificial — the water’s too blue, the leaves are too glossy, the landscape too perfect.

…How long do you have? (a thread) There are actually multiple reasons. The first is the most obvious: in the original book by L Frank Baum, Dorothy’s slippers are silver, with the illustrations by W.W. Denslow depicting them with a pointed toe and mary jane-style buckle.

So when exactly did that change, and why?

No this actually happened. Even years AFTER World War II ended, the US government punished people who had expressed “premature anti-Nazi sympathies.” Meaning they punished people for having correctly opposed the Nazis before the US had officially joined the war against the Nazis.

https://twitter.com/akilahobviously/status/1854724037479407968

I wrote a thread about Vincent Price’s experience being investigated by the FBI and greylisted in the 1950s for this exact reason, and how saying that fascists were bad led to the blacklisting of two of his closest friends:

https://twitter.com/gothspiderbitch/status/1732618563771359523

For years, I’ve been collecting books that were signed by Vincent Price throughout his life. My favorites are the ones with heartfelt notes that he’d written to those he loved and those who loved him, and recently I think I may have found the most special one yet. (a thread) I’ve often shared these excerpts from Vincent’s daughter’s book, describing how her father, along with many of his friends and colleagues, were blacklisted and unable to work for many years during the McCarthy era after being accused of having “premature anti-Nazi sympathies.”

Ok VERY long thread:

SO I attended several auctions today and there was one held by a reputable auction house that mainly sells smaller ticket items like autographs, and always gets good reviews. I noticed they took a while to close each lot after the winning bid, but no biggie. WELL. There were a few items that I took a mental note of because I thought they wouldn’t sell and was pretty surprised when they did. But then later, I went to check something in the catalogue and saw that those same items were now marked as “passed”, aka not sold. Weird.