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Judy Garland’s long-lost ‘Wizard of Oz’ dress turns up at Catholic University



The Rev. Gilbert Hartke and a student with the Dorothy dress. It was a gift to the head of Catholic University’s drama department from actress Mercedes McCambridge in 1973. (Special Collections, Catholic University)

By Paul Duggan
July 8, 2021 | Updated today at 8:54 a.m. EDT

Nearly half a century ago, a story in Catholic University’s student newspaper described a “precious gift” bestowed on the school by Oscar-winning actress Mercedes McCambridge, then an artist-in-residence in the university’s drama department.

Here was a rare piece of Tinseltown memorabilia, a farm girl’s blue gingham dress, one of several — though not many — worn by Judy Garland in her role as Dorothy Gale in the classic 1939 movie “The Wizard of Oz.” It wasn’t quite the famed ruby slippers, but the garment was a fascinating artifact just the same.

Garland, “the lonely, tired entertainer, often spoke of college and how ‘it all could have been different’ if she had made it there,” the 1973 story said. In donating the outfit, McCambridge alluded to the drug and alcohol addictions that had led to her “close friend” Garland’s death, and she hoped that the dress would be “a source of hope, strength and courage to the students,” as the reporter put it.

Well . . . ... The precious gift got lost at some point, folded and placed inside a box like an old sweater and stuck away — eventually no one could remember where — in the drama department building on Catholic’s Northeast Washington campus.

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The dress on display in Mullen Library at Catholic University. (Patrick G. Ryan/Catholic University)

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“It’s not in Kansas anymore,” the university declared in a news release, adding, “It can now be preserved in proper storage in a temperature- and humidity-controlled environment” as part of the school’s “special collections.”

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By Paul M. Duggan
Paul Duggan has been a staff writer for The Washington Post since 1987. He specializes in crime and justice issues but also has written extensively about housing problems in Washington, particularly the impact of gentrification. He is a former general assignment reporter, assignment editor and national correspondent for The Post. Twitter https://twitter.com/dugganwapo