A lot of elements go into making movie magic, but one of the biggest may be props. Props do quite a bit of heavy lifting when it comes to movies, helping to create iconic looks, giving beloved characters their signature cars, and even lending villains we love to hate the tools to be bad. Props are often so important to movies and develop so much importance to pop culture that they become serious collectors’ items worth a lot of money — and sometimes end up the stars of their own stories. Hollywood is full of tales about iconic movie props that were lost, stolen, or have otherwise simply gone missing.
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Sometimes, the truth is stranger than fiction — or at least just as interesting. From the wild history of Dorothy’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz to the saga of a stolen James Bond car to the enduring mystery of the statue from The Maltese Falcon and more, here are five iconic lost movie props and what happened to them.
The Maltese Falcon statuette mystery
In the 1941 film The Maltese Falcon, Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade embarks on a high-stakes quest for a jewel-encrusted falcon statuette — the Maltese Falcon. The Jack Huston written and directed film is an absolute classic (it was one of the first 25 films chosen by the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”) but it’s the story of the film’s falcon statuette prop that might be one of the most interesting aspects of the film. Several of the statuettes were made for the film but over the years several versions of the falcon have popped up — including a 45-pound metal prop as well as lighter weight plaster versions. The hefty lead version was purchased by casino mogul Steve Wynn for $4.1 million in 2013 and that version was allegedly authenticated by a Warner Bros. archivist as being the authentic one used in the film. However, there still remains questions about if the plaster birds were used instead or if anyone actually has the original prop at all. The only thing about the falcon statuette is that it is one of the most valuable props in movie history and its mystery is pretty great, too.
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A new hope for Star Wars’ Death Star
One of the cool things about Star Wars is that it’s a franchise that utilizes practical effects and that goes all the way back to the beginning, though in the case of one extremely iconic piece of movie and Star Wars history a practical prop ended up with the trash — literally. The original Death Star model from Star Wars: A New Hope wasn’t exactly considered a preservation priority when the film wrapped but was saved from being thrown out by a storage employee. Eventually, the model made its way to an antique store where a fan spotted it but was unable to buy it. The prop ended up being sold to a country western musical show and, when it closed, the fan arranged to buy the prop which by then was being used as a trash can. After being rescued by the fan, the original Death Star model has been restored and displayed in museums. Fun side note: when the fan spotted the model in the antique store, he contacted Lucasfilm to let them know about the prop — and the studio claimed at the time that the prop had been destroyed.
Cattle rustling on the set of World War Z
In World War Z, Brad Pitt stars as Gerry Lane, a former United Nations investigator who is finds himself reluctantly back in action searching for a cure to the sudden zombie pandemic. But while the 2013 film was a box office success (it’s the highest-grossing zombie film of all time) it’s also the center of what might be the most unusual cattle heist. Among the film’s props were a pair of fiberglass cows that were used to help turn a field in Scotland into war-ravaged Philadelphia, a location in the film where Pitt’s character lives at before the zombie outbreak. The cows — which didn’t actually look like real cows but more the general shape of cows — were inexplicably stolen from the set despite a security guard being on duty at the time of the heist. The theft occurred in 2011. Nearly 14 years later, the fate of the cows remains a mystery.
James Bond’s missing Aston Martin’s international adventure
There is no shortage of truly iconic things associated with James Bond but one of the coolest may just be agent 007’s car — specifically the Aston Martin DB5 featured in both Goldfinger and Thunderball. Four DB5s were made with two used for filming and two used for promotional purposes and of the filming cars, chassis number DP/2161/1 was fitted with various gadgets for the film. After filming, it was stripped of all the weapons and gadgets, appeared in 1981’s The Cannonball Run, and was eventually sold. And that’s where the Aston Martin really goes on an adventure.
In 1986, a businessman named Anthony Pugliese purchased the vehicle at a Sotheby’s New York auction for $275,000. But in June 1997, the vehicle mysteriously vanished from a secure hangar in a Boca Raton, Florida airport. In the years following the vehicle’s theft there were plenty of theories about the car including that it was stolen by a real-life Bond villain. However, it’s location remained a mystery for 25 years until, in 2022, it was confirmed that the vehicle had been located in a “private setting” in the Middle East. Details about exactly where the vehicle is currently or the circumstances around how it got there have not been revealed, nor has the vehicle been recovered. The identity of the vehicle was authenticated by an anonymous authenticator and, according to Art Recovery International’s Christopher Marinello, who has worked the case since 2007, it’s not believed that the current owner of the vehicle was aware it was stolen when they acquired it.
The long journey of Dorothy’s Wizard of Oz ruby slippers
One of the wildest stories about a lost Hollywood movie prop might just belong to Dorothy’s ruby slippers from 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. While the various pairs of ruby slippers from the movie are their own story, it’s the pair that ended up being sold to Michael Shaw and went on display as part of Shaw’s Hollywood on Tour show in the 1980s that is the story we’re telling here. The shoes, at various points, were loaned to the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota to be on display and that was the case in 2005, where they were set to be displayed as part of a 10-week viewing for the annual Judy Garland Festival. However, after being on display for just a week, the shoes were stolen and disappeared without a trace until 2017 when someone came forward, telling the shoes’ insurer that he knew the location of the shoes.
The shoes were recovered in a sting operation by the FBI in 2018. The man who stole the slippers, Terry Martin, allegedly stole the slippers because he had been told they were made from real rubies and their $1 million insurance price helping convince him of that idea. However, upon realizing the shoes were actually adorned with sequins he got rid of them. Martin was indicted on one count of major artwork theft but the recovery of the shoes isn’t the end of the story. As part of the authentication process, the shoes were examined by the Smithsonian as they also have a pair of the ruby slippers on display and that’s when a secret revealed itself: the Shaw slippers and the Smithsonian slippers crossmatch, or more simply put, are “mismatched twins” — you can read the whole fascinating details of that discovery straight from the Smithsonian.
The recovered slippers ended up selling at auction for $32.5 million in December, but the story has just one final twist. Earlier this month it was reported that the man accused of hiding the stolen slippers for nearly 13 years — Jerry Hal Saliterman — plans to plead guilty to charges of theft of a major artwork and witness tampering for his role in the caper. Martin previously pled guilty to his charges in October 2023 and was sentenced to time served due to his poor health in January 2024.
