A large reward has been offered for the return of Judy Garland’s Wizard of Oz shoes nearly a decade after they were stolen from a Minnesota museum

It has been almost 10 years since the famous red sequinned shoes worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz were stolen from a museum in Minnesota. They were insured for $1m (£640,000); the perpetrator was never caught, and the shoes are still at large.

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Now an anonymous do-gooder is attempting to bring the shoes home by offering a $1m reward for information leading to their retrieval, according to the New York Post. The shoes are now estimated to be worth around $3m. John Kilsh, executive director at the Judy Garland museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, says that the donor is a big fan of the movie.

The shoes were designed by Adrian Greenberg, MGM’s chief costume designer in the 1930s. Originally, they were to be silver, but scriptwriter Noel Langley is credited with changing them to red, a decision intended to provide a striking visual contrast for when Dorothy was transported from black-and-white Kansas to the Technicolor magical world of Oz.

Several pairs were made for the film, but only four remain in circulation. They are kept at the Smithsonian museum in Washington, and have only left the US once, when they were shown at the V&A in London in 2012. Costume designer Nadoolman Landis said that the shoes exemplified “the best of cinema storytelling, because they evoke memory and emotion”.