Summary
29 July 2013
A collection of costumes from the classic 1965 film, The Sound of Music, have sold for $1.3m at an auction in California. They included the dress worn by the film's lead character Maria, played by Julie Andrews, when she sang "Do Re Mi."
Reporter:
Peter Bowes
The musical film won five Oscars in 1966
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There was intense interest in the iconic costumes as they went under the hammer. Potential buyers, gathered in a Los Angeles auction house, faced competition from bidders on the phone and the internet.
The central piece was Maria's outfit, described by the auctioneers as "a heavy brown homespun Austrian-style dress with a wheat-coloured homespun blouse." The floral lederhosen worn by the Von Trapp children were also part of the collection. The identity of the successful bidder has not been revealed.
The Sound of Music costumes were sold as part of a two-day auction of Hollywood memorabilia. Other items included an original cane used by Charlie Chaplin in the comedy Modern Times and, a month after his death, the clothes worn by James Gandolfini in the final scene of the final episode of The Sopranos, sold for $22,000.
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Vocabulary
- intense
extreme
- iconic
famous and well known
- under the hammer
for sale at auction
- bidders
people who offer to buy things at an auction
- homespun
(here) traditional cloth made at home
- lederhosen
shorts made of leather, traditionally worn by men in alpine regions of Europe
- revealed
made known to people / made public
- memorabilia
objects that are collected because they belonged to someone famous
