The entertainment world is abuzz with news of the sale of the fabled Rosebud sled from Orson Welles’ 1941 classic Citizen Kane.
The website Intelligent Collector described the sled as one of only four props in the 125-year history of the movies that achieved the status of “incomparable movie icon”. It forms the main plot point for what many still regard as the greatest film made.
While an unknown number of sleds were used in the original production, there were, before this week, only two known sleds in private hands. One of these is owned by director Steven Spielberg, who bought it in 1982 for $60,500 (R1.08m). The other was bought by an anonymous buyer in 1996 for $233,000.
When a third Rosebud, which had since 1984 been a prized possession of Gremlins director Joe Dante, showed up, Heritage Auctions placed a $250,000 on this holy grail of movie memorabilia. It was star lot in an auction that included original key artwork for Apocalypse Now, a bullwhip wielded by Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, inscribed tablets from Cecil B DeMille’s The Ten Commandments and Luke Skywalker’s Red Five X-Wing fighter from The Empire Strikes Back.
According to Intelligent Collector, the other props in the small pantheon of “incomparable movie icon” props are: the statue pursued by Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade in John Huston’s seminal 1941 noir The Maltese Falcon — sold for $4m in 2013; the piano played by Dooley Wilson’s character Sam in the 1942 Bogart classic Casablanca sold for $3.4m in 2014; and the magical pair of ruby red slippers that Judy Garland’s Dorothy wore in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, which fetched an eye-watering $32.5m on auction in December last year.
Rosebud is the final word uttered by the dying millionaire and media mogul Charles Foster Kane in the opening scene of Welles’ film, which sets off the investigation into his life by reporters searching for its meaning, and is finally revealed to refer to a sled he had has a child.
Of all the fabled top-tier items in movie memorabilia collection, the sled may be considered, as Intelligent Collector observed, the one “most critical to the plot, while also becoming the most enigmatic, with questions about its origins and history that linger to this day”.
As executive vice-president of Heritage Auctions Joe Maddalena told the website: “Far more than a prop, Rosebud is a powerful symbol of cinematic storytelling and an emblem of lost innocence and longing. Rosebud embodies the emotional core of a motion picture widely regarded as the greatest ever made, a film that defined the language of cinema.”
The story of how it ended up in Dante’s possession is one of dumb luck and serendipity. Dante didn’t fork out hundreds of thousands of dollars to become a Rosebud owner, in fact he didn’t pay a cent for the sled.
While directing the 1985 sci-fi comedy Explorers starring Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix, Dante was approached by someone who had been clearing out part of the Paramount studio lot, which had been home to RKO studios, the producer of Citizen Kane, in the golden era of Hollywood.
As Dante recalled in an interview with Intelligent Collector: “One of the crew who knew I was a fan of vintage films came to me with a wood prop and said ‘they’re throwing out all of this stuff. You might want this’.” Dante wasn’t sure that his fairy godmother “knew what the sled was, but he must have had some inkling, or why else would he have asked me. I was astonished. Since I am a huge fan of the movie, I said ‘yeah, I’ll be glad to take it’.”
Though Dante’s Rosebud bears some signs of wear and tear, it was scientifically authenticated and deemed by Heritage to be the real deal. But the real deal is the price that Dante’s serendipitous freebie fetched when it finally went under the hammer on Wednesday.
After adding in the buyer’s premium Dante’s Rosebud sold to an anonymous buyer for $14.75m, making it the second most expensive piece of movie memorabilia in history. Dante was overjoyed: “To see Rosebud find a new home — and make history in the process — is both surreal and deeply gratifying. It’s a testament to the enduring power of storytelling.”
He’s also laughing all the way to the bank. As news of Rosebud’s record price spreads, don’t be surprised if many Hollywood hoarders are suddenly scratching through their attics and basements looking if they might have a Rosebud of their own.
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