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August 2020 - Antique Shoppe - 15
History
Continued from Page 10
August 16, 1949: Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone With The Wind,
passed away from injuries after being hit by a car. The driver Hugh Gravitt
turned himself in and served almost 11 months in prison, two months
on a chain gang (tulsaworld.com, 9/5/91). He died in 1994, still remorseful
(orlandosentinel.com, 4/22/94).
A 1938 edition of Gone With the Wind autographed by 26 cast members
and two directors—hit $ 135,300 at a Profiles in History auction in 2012. The
Tara plantation door from the 1939 movie auctioned for $120,000 in 2019
at Profiles in History (ajc.com, 7/2/19).
August 16, 1954: Dracula’s alter ego Bela Lugosi (Béla Ferenc Dezső
Blaskó) passed away at the age of 73. Lugosi came to America from
Hungary as a seaman before acting the part of Dracula on Broadway in
1927, and in the movie in 1931. Unfortunately, his accent typecast him for
horror flicks, severely limiting his acting career. A Dracula one sheet movie
poster style A, 27 x 41 inches, sank its teeth into $525,800 (including buyer’s
premium) at Heritage Auctions in November 2017.
August 18, 1992: Larry Bird
announced his retirement from
basketball. A member of the 1992
Olympic Basketball Dream Team,
his USA game-worn jersey sold for
$4,800 at Julien’s in 2014. A game-
used 1992 USA Olympic Dream
Team basketball sold for $230,041
in 2015 at SCP Auctions. This multi-
signed basketball (autographed
by 11 players including Michael
Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry
Bird plus Coach Daly) was used in the U.S. Men’s 117-85, gold medal-
clinching victory over Croatia in Barcelona.
August 18, 2018: Mickey Mantle’s game-worn
New York Yankees jersey from the 1964 World
Series went for $1.32 million. Rated MEARS A9,
Mantle hit two home runs during the Series, one
that won Game 3. Mantle’s 1965 fielder’s glove
went for $144,000 in 2017, both at Heritage
Auctions. (Photo, Heritage Auctions, HA.com)
August 19, 2019: Norman Rockwell’s original
1948 artwork for Tough Call hit $1.68 million at
Heritage Auctions in
Dallas. It now resides
in the Baseball Hall
of Fame; the artist
signed and inscribed it: “My best wishes
to ‘Beans’ Reardon, the greatest umpire
ever lived, Sincerely, Norman Rockwell.”
Tough Call,s painted for the April 23, 1949
cover of The Saturday Evening Post depicts
three umpires deciding if a game should be
called for rain. The most paid for a Rockwell
painting is $46 million for Saying Grace,
America’s all-time favorite, 2013 at Sotheby’s.
(Photo courtesy of Heritage Auctions, HA.com)
August 21, 1911: Italian Vincenzo Peruggia stole Leonardo da Vinci’s
Mona Lisa from the Louvre in Paris. He was arrested two years later in Italy,
but only served seven months of a one-year sentence. He was considered
somewhat of a national hero for returning the famous painting to the
homeland of da Vinci for a brief period of time.
August 23, 1966: The last concert performance
of the Beatles as a group was held in Shea Stadium
in New York. The Fab Four later did an unannounced
performance on the small roof of their Apple Corp.
headquarters in London on Jan. 30, 1969, but never
again for a tour or a concert. After 42 minutes on the
roof, the police told the Beatles to turn down the
volume.
A 1966 Shea Stadium NY poster for their last real
concert brought $137,500 with buyer’s premium at
Heritage Auction in April 2020.
August 25, 1930: The first James Bond was born,
Sean Connery. Of the twenty-six Bond movies, Connery starred in seven;
only Roger Moore acted in as many. The DB5 Aston Martin driven by
Connery in Goldfinger and Thunderball, purchased for $12,000 in the ‘60s,
was auctioned for £2.6 million in 2010. Proceeds went to charity;
Thousand Faces,” passed away. With 150+ movie roles
August 26, 1930: Lon Chaney, “The Man of a
from 1913-1930 (imdb.com) to his credit—including
Phantom of the Opera (1925) and The Hunchback of
Notre Dame (1923) it is fitting that the one-sheet for
London After Midnight (1927) sold for $478,000 at
Heritage Auctions in 2014. In it, he played a vampire.
This was the only known copy of the two versions of
this poster.
August 26, 2018: The highest price paid for a car
at auction was achieved on this day with RM Sotheby’s
selling a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO (S/N 3413 GT) in Monterey,
CA. for $48.4 million. The previous record was also for a 1962 Ferrari 250
GTO (S/N 3851GT) which hit the road for $38 million in 2014. The most ever
paid for any car was in the private sale of a 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO racer for
$52 million in 2013 (bloomberg.com, 10/2/13).
August 27, 1576: Renaissance master Titian
(TizianoVecelli) died in Venice of a fever while the
city was being ravaged by the plague. Famous for
painting David and Goliath, The Rape of Europa, The
Punishment of Tythus, and many more. His Portrait
of Alfonso d’Avalos with a Page (shown) regaled with
$70 million at Sotheby’s in 2003.
August 28, 2005: One of the four existing
pairs of Dorothy’s ruby slippers from The Wizard
of Oz was stolen from the Judy Garland Museum
in Grand Rapids, MN. (forbes.com, 12/3/08). When
the thief or thieves broke in, security cameras and
alarms systems were not working. Then in 2018,
as if by magic, the FBI reported the famous shoes had been recovered/
returned, but it did not name the wicked witch who absconded with them
(washingtonpost.com, 4/3/19). It did report an extortion attempt in 2017
on the company that insured the shoes.
August 29, 1982: Swedish movie star
Ingrid Bergman passed away 67 years to
the day after she was born in 1915. In 2017,
a Casablanca (1946) movie poster featuring
Humphrey Bogart and Bergman left Heritage
Auctions for $478,000. It was the first post-
war release of an Italian 4 - Fogli (55.5 x 78.25
inches) poster with some restoration. (Photo
courtesy of Heritage Auctions, HA.com)
Also, the piano on which “Play it again,
Sam” (Dooley Wilson) played As Time Goes By
at Bergman’s request sold for $3.4 million at
Bonhams in 2014.
August 29, 1958: Michael Jackson popped
into the world. In 2015, the Record Industry
Association of America reported that Thriller
sold 100 million albums worldwide, and
Jackson had 1 billion sales overall. More than 13 million of his albums have
sold since his death on June 25, 2009 (yahoo.com, 6/26/17). His sequined
white glove went with a flourish for
$350,000 at Julien’s in 2009.
August 30, 1797: The birthday
of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the
“mother” of Frankenstein. Published in
1818, Frankenstein was a horror classic
in print and on film. An original art
illustration created by Bernie Wrightson
for his 1970s comic book version of
Frankenstein made $240,000 (with bp) in
May 2020 at Heritage Auctions.
Credit: Timelines.ws and Wikipedia.org.
Unless otherwise credited, all photos are public
domain, PD-US.
Mike McLeod’s book, This Day in Collecting History,
includes 650+ photos and collecting history events
for every day of the year. It is available on Amazon.
com and Schifferbooks.com. It’s a great gift for
collectors, pop culture enthusiasts, history buffs
and for yourself.