ruby slippers

Powerfully magical footwear. Tap the heels together three times and say, "There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like home."

In the L. Frank Baum book, Dorothy the slippers weren't ruby, but silver. One of the writers at MGM changed them to ruby, perhaps because red would show up better in a color film.

There are six extant pairs of ruby slippers known today. The most recently sold pair went for $600,000 at auction this year. The six have been named:

• Dorothy's Shoes: these were sent from Hollywood to New York when the movie opened for publicity.
• The People's Shoes: this is the pair at the Smithsonian in Washington, D. C..
• The Traveling Shoes: this pair travels around the US on display.
• The Witch's Shoes: these were stolen from a closet at MGM in 1970.
• The Arabian Test Shoes: owned by Debbie Reynolds.
• The Bugle Bead Shoes: an early test pair. These don't have bows on front.

There is a book entirely about the ruby slippers from the movie The Wizard of Oz. The Ruby Slippers of Oz by Rhys Thomas. It's now out-of-print.

Two websites about the ruby slippers are:
    http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/6396/rubyslip.htm     http://users.deltacomm.com/rainbowz/rubyslipperfanclub

The ruby slipper, as used in The Wizard of Oz, was originally supposed to be silver. This was, of course, ruined for the film version, which lent a certain ambiguity to Baum's original purpose for the slipper.

The silver slipper and the golden brick road were both representative of the United States Treasury issue of the day: whether to keep the gold standard or to include a silver standard. That is, paper money would be backed by silver as well as gold.

The largely accepted interpretation of this reference is that he was supporting the addition of silver to the Treasury system.

The silver/gold reference was one of several depicted by Baum, including the similarity between the characters and their real life counterparts, as well as the Emerald City being the symbol of a happy and healthy currency at the end of the road. See The Wizard of Oz.