Academy Museum Gives Debbie Reynolds Her Due as a Costume Conservator

“Debbie sat on my sofa and cried when she had to sell,” Landis said, recalling the first of three Reynolds auctions in 2011 and 2014. “The academy bought nothing. It was a tragedy.”

Kramer noted that the Academy Museum had recently purchased an array of costumes in private transactions, including Marlene Dietrich’s evening robe from “Blonde Venus” (1932), Gene Kelly’s sweater and slacks from “An American in Paris,” and a denim and flannel outfit worn by Kathy Bates in “Misery.” Leonardo DiCaprio, Steven Spielberg and Terry Semel, the former Warner Bros. chief, teamed in 2012 to buy a pair of ruby slippers from “The Wizard of Oz” for the museum, which was then pointed toward an opening in 2017. (Four pairs, size 5, are known to survive.)

And some things have recently been gifted in full or part to the museum, including Bela Lugosi’s floor-length “Dracula” cape. (Museum conservators have worked to restore it. The black wool exterior and taupe silk crepe lining tore apart over the years, likely the result of changing humidity.) “It is important to us as a museum to be able to restore and safeguard this artifact, especially knowing that much of the material history of the classic horror cycle has been lost forever,” Jessica Niebel, exhibitions curator, said in a statement last year.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/16/movies/academy-museum-debbie-reynolds-costumes.html