Yahoo Lifestyle Here Are 11 Iconic Movie Props That Were Either Stolen, Lost, Or Nearly Destroyed
Many movies are synonymous with their props; for example, who can see a DeLorean and not immediately think of Back to the Future? However, with the iconicity of a prop comes great responsibility...
Often, a prop's monetary or cultural value will make it a target for theft, but on the flip side, a priceless prop will sometimes be forgotten about or even completely lost. From Dorothy's ruby slippers to the treasure map from The Goonies — here are 11 iconic movie props that disappeared under bizarre circumstances:
1.Dorothy's ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz:
In August 2005, an authentic pair of ruby slippers, known as the "Traveling Pair," worn in the classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, was stolen from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. The Grand Rapids police took on the mysterious case and conducted numerous interviews, investigated theories, and even went so far as to search abandoned iron ore pits for years afterward. However, no arrests were made, and the slippers were never discovered.
But alas, the shoes didn't walk away on their own. Twelve years later, Grand Rapids Police requested the FBI's assistance with the search, as the case had remained a top priority. Thanks to a sting operation in July 2018, the slippers were eventually found.
In October 2023, 76-year-old Terry Jon Martin pleaded guilty to the theft of a major artwork. He confessed that he used a hammer to smash both the museum door and the slippers' display case to gain access.
At his hearing, he revealed the reason behind his theft was that he believed the slippers contained real rubies, and his intention was to remove and sell them. However, before Martin could sell the stolen shoes, he discovered that the "rubies" were not real, so he decided to get rid of the slippers altogether. Due to terminal illness, Martin was sentenced to time served. His accomplice, Jerry Hal Saliterman, was also charged with a felony count of theft of a major artwork.
In March 2024, the FBI returned the ruby slippers to their owner, Michael Shaw, in a private ceremony.
2.Spider-Man (2002) suits:
In the words of The Incredibles, "Honey, where's my super suit?" That quote wouldn't have been out of place on the set of Sam Raimi's 2002 Spider-Man when not one but four of the web-slinging hero's suits were stolen from the studio.
Fortunately, filming could continue at that stage in the production process — albeit with some creative directorial decisions. Sony, however, was still desperate to get their costumes back and even went so far as to offer a $25,000 reward for their safe return.
Despite the reward and general showiness of the costumes, not even a spidey sense of their whereabouts was detected until 18 months after the theft when a former studio security guard's ex-wife called and pointed investigators in his direction. The guard in question was Jeffrey Gustafson, who intermittently worked for both Sony and Warner Brothers between 1996 and 2001.
The search for the suits was expanded to cover both the east and west coasts of the United States and Japan. Three of the costumes were discovered in collectors' homes, and the fourth was found in the house of a man named Robert Hughes, who was later discovered to be Gustafson's co-conspirator.
In an epic franchise crossover, a Batman suit — missing since 1996 — was also found in the search for Spidey's costume.
Caught in a web (pun fully intended) of crime, Gustafson was charged with two counts of receiving stolen property, and Hughes was charged with one count of receiving stolen property.
Gary Martin, the then-president of Columbia Pictures, stated, "We took this seriously from the beginning, and while we had other costumes to use in the production, we were willing to invest the time and money to track down those responsible. We have a zero-tolerance policy for theft and will pursue all violators."
3.The original Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer puppets:
For a few decades, Rudolph and Santa joined the Island of Misfit Toys themselves.
In the early 1960s, Ichiro Komuro, a puppet maker in Japan, was commissioned to craft miniature movable figurines from wood, wire, cloth, leather, and yak hair. The puppets were then taken to Tadahito Mochinaga’s MOM Productions in Tokyo, where using the power of stop-motion "Animagic," the classic Christmas special was born.
After filming wrapped, the figurines were shipped from Tokyo to the Rankin/Bass Productions offices in New York, where they were stored for a decade. In the early '70s, Arthur Rankin Jr. gifted the figures to his secretary, Barbara Adams, who used the dolls as Christmas tree decorations. She later bequeathed the figures to one of her nephews, who, in 2005, brought the puppets to pop culture appraiser Simeon Lipman to be valued on an episode of Antiques Roadshow.
Though most of the figures had melted due to being stored in a hot attic, the two surviving puppets — which just so happened to be Santa and Rudolph — were then valued between $8,000 and $10,000.
Keith Kriess, toy aficionado and owner of Time and Space Toys, purchased the puppets for more than their appraisal and spent another $4,000 to have the dolls meticulously restored.
In 2020, the puppets were auctioned off and sold for a grand total of $368,000.
4.The Death Star from Star Wars: A New Hope:
This lost prop did not end up in a galaxy far, far away, but rather as a trashcan in Missouri.
After the first film in the Star Wars franchise wrapped production in 1977, many of the movie's most iconic set pieces and props were kept in a storage facility. Several years later, however, the studio decided they no longer wanted to pay rent on the facility and threw away many of the items that had been kept in storage.
Cut to Missouri in the early 1990s when Todd Franklin, a recent high school graduate, worked a summer job for his local TV station near Lake of the Ozarks. While filming a segment about local businesses, the news team visited an antique store where Franklin, a longtime Star Wars fan, noticed a large gray object that looked similar to the Death Star. At the time, however, he believed a classic piece of movie memorabilia wouldn't have found its home in a mom-and-pop antique store.
When Franklin returned home that night, he watched A New Hope to compare notes with the mysterious gray item he saw in the store earlier that day. Happy with his assessment, he returned to the store the following day and spoke with the owners. They told him they had previously owned a storage facility in California where movie studios often housed memorabilia. When they shut the facility down, the movers had wisely decided to save the Star Wars props.
Franklin wanted to buy the Death Star but didn't have the necessary funds, so he decided to do the next best thing: Call Lucasfilm and tell them of their long-lost prop. However, the production company informed him that the prop had been destroyed during filming.
The antique store owners later sold the prop to a short-lived country and western musical show, Star World, which closed in 1993. Franklin took this as a sign and arranged a meeting to buy the prop. When he arrived, the iconic piece of cinematic history was being used as a trashcan.
The piece turned out to be authentic, and Franklin purchased it before later selling it to the Star Wars Collector's Archive website owner. Since then, the prop has undergone major restoration efforts and has been showcased at museums.
5.The Goonies treasure map:
In June 2015, at a 30th-anniversary screening and Q&A of the classic '80s adventure flick The Goonies, the film's star, Sean Astin, opened up about a very important prop that went missing — all thanks to his mother, Patty Duke: "Well, this is the story that I’ve been telling. What dare I say? I don’t believe we were formally gifted these items. But I remember being in possession of it [the map]. It’s an item that would probably be worth like a hundred grand now. And I think my mom threw it out. Although I may owe her an apology.
I lived at 266 Denzel Avenue, Los Angeles, California, 90069. And I moved out when I was eighteen, but I left all of my stuff at home. When I say I moved out, I mean I moved my body out. And then I went to do Memphis Belle in London, and when I came back, my mom had sold our house. She bought another house. But for eighteen years, I had saved some things, thrown some things away. But now nobody knows where the map is. It wasn’t in any of the boxes."
6.The Scrumdiddlyumptious Bars from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory:
Now regarded as a cult classic, Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory was considered a flop upon its release in 1971 — which means the studio was more than happy to rid themselves of anything relating to the film.
As Wonka enthusiast and collector Gregor Gee explained to the BBC, "They had to almost immediately clear the studios because they were filming Cabaret with Liza Minnelli there, so everything got thrown in the skip. I don't think anyone realized back then that props and costumes would be so valuable and so important because the movie was actually a complete flop in 1971."
Luckily for Gee and other Wonka fans alike, a few props managed to survive — including only one of the famed Scrumdiddlyumptious bars, which Gee owns. While speaking about his collection, he elaborated on the true rarity of owning the elusive "candy," "The stand-out piece for me has to be the Scrumdiddlyumptious bar because there were thousands and thousands made, and there is only one that has survived. I am very proud to have it."
7.The bikes from Easy Rider:
The motorcycles from the 1969 drama Easy Rider are arguably some of the most iconic bikes to ever grace the silver screen. They were so iconic, apparently, that armed gunmen felt the need to steal them...during production.
Actor Michael Madsen, best known for his frequent appearances in Tarantino-directed films, told the L.A. Times that his late friend and Easy Rider star Dennis Hopper had previously confided in him that four of the bikes used in the film's production had either been destroyed or stolen. Madsen recalled Hopper's terrifying tale of armed gunmen stealing three of the motorcycles from stuntman Tex Hall. According to Hopper, Hall allegedly went after the thieves with a machine gun but was unable to get the bikes back.
Madsen revealed, "They were in a storage unit. They got stolen and sold for parts. They were never seen again. They don't exist."
8.The Red Ryder BB gun from A Christmas Story:
If one has ever watched A Christmas Story, they certainly remember Ralphie's struggle to get an official Red Ryder Air Rifle. And for Peter Jones, former owner of the "A Christmas Story House" in Cleveland, the quest to relocate one of the prop Red Ryders was just as difficult.
In 2015, Jones revealed just how arduous the task of finding one of the remaining BB guns was, "There were six guns made for the movie, and I knew that Peter Billingsley had one and Daisy had one in its museum. And I wasn’t sure where the other ones were." He told reporters that his acquisition "kind of found us. Someone on our Facebook page contacted us and they said 'Hey did you see there was this site selling one of the guns from the movie?' And I went right over there and checked it out and sure enough…"
This particular rifle belonged to one of the prop masters who was willing to part with the piece of movie history for $10,000. However, Jones revealed that he never got the chance to furnish the museum with an authentic "leg lamp" as they were all thrown away or destroyed in the 1990s.
9.James Bond's 1964 Aston Martin:
In June 1997, a heist befitting a Bond movie occurred in Florida when one of 007's classic sports cars, a 1964 silver Aston Martin featured in Thunderball and Goldfinger, was stolen from a private aircraft hangar.
The vehicle — equipped with an array of "spyware," including machine guns and ejector seats — was purchased by entrepreneur and car collector Anthony Pugliese at a Sotheby's auction in 1986 for a sum of $275,000. After his purchase, Pugliese safely stored the iconic automobile in a private hangar at the Boca Raton Airport for the next 11 years. Many believe the thieves dragged the cumbersome classic car out of the hangar by its axles and loaded it onto a waiting cargo plane.
Unfortunately, many theories surrounding the sports car's whereabouts throughout the following decades led to dead ends. That is, until early 2022 when Christopher Marinello, Art Recovery International's chief executive, received a tip from a so-called eyewitness who claimed to have seen the Aston Martin in a "private setting" somewhere in the Middle East.
This report led Marinello to focus his investigation on Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Kuwait. He told reporters, "I'm hopeful the possessor will come forward voluntarily before I have to make an announcement...I don't believe the current possessor knew the car was stolen when he or she acquired it. Now they do know, I think they should make every effort to have a discreet confidential discussion about how we clear the title to this iconic vehicle."
The car is now valued at around $25,000,000.
10.Dozens of firearms from First Blood:
In January 1982, dozens of firearms were stolen from the set of First Blood, the first film in the Rambo franchise. Contemporary reports stated that the stolen guns were worth around $50,000; among them were fully automatic rifles, shotguns, revolvers, semi-automatic AR-15 rifles, and M-16s.
Fortunately, the weapons had been modified to fire only blanks due to their role as props in the action film. However, Roy Byrne, a Superintendent for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, told the New York Times that "a relatively minor operation would make most of them fully operative again." While it was officially reported that 47 firearms were stolen in total, some close to production claimed the number was closer to 100.
At the time of the theft, the location was guarded by Canadian Army members — who also served as extras in the film itself — and the guns were stored in a locked wooden box inside a truck that held most of the movie's props. According to the Mounted Police report, there were no signs of forced entry despite the truck having two padlocks on the side doors and a combination lock on the back door.
In December 1984 — nearly three years later after the heist occurred — three men from Vancouver and Coquitlam were charged with the theft, and 15 of the stolen firearms were found. A month later, Mounted Police officers discovered more of the weapons near the Vancouver Airport.
Five months later, Richard Edward Gallant — the ringleader — was sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay $2,500 to the movie's insurance company. His accomplices, John Krahn and Douglas Burgess, were given lighter fines and sentences.
11.Fiberglass cows from World War Z:
Perhaps one of the more bizarre props stolen from film or rather "moo-vie" sets was the fiberglass cows from the apocalyptic sci-fi flick World War Z.
Although taking place in a zombie-ravaged Philadelphia, the scenes for this particular set were filmed at the Grangemouth oil refinery in Falkirk, Scotland. Despite a security guard being on duty, thieves managed to steal two fiberglass cows.
A resident who lived near the set told reporters, "A herd of fake cows were brought in a few days ago and put in the field. They don't look like real animals, so we have been wondering how they might be used.
They look like concrete but they are made out of fiberglass and not as heavy as they look. They were taken from under the nose of security staff. The thieves were a bit cheeky."
However, it does not seem the cows were ever located — which most would deem an "udder" disappointment.
Did any of these prop disappearances surprise you? Do you know of any other movie props or memorabilia that vanished under strange circumstances? Let us know in the comments!
