Few of us can afford to bid on Elizabeth Taylor’s prized possessions up for auction this month at Christie’s. But fans with $30 can look in on the upscale garage sale before the film legend’s goods to on the block.
“The Collection of Elizabeth Taylor,” running Saturday through Dec. 12, features everything from film memorabilia to paintings, jewelry, accessories and decorative items. The collection is expected to fetch more than $50 million when Lizophiles get a chance to bid on everything Dec. 13.
“I think two of the most interesting things are the leather bound scripts from ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ and ‘National Velvet,’” said Heather Barnhart, Christie’s project director for the collection. “As a present for her, [husband] Eddie Fisher bound all of her scripts in lilac leather with gold embossing and he added movie stills in the back of them.”
The bound “National Velvet” script is expected to sell for between $2,000 and $3,000, while “Tin Roof” should pull in between $3,000 and $5,000.Among the highest-priced possessions is the Elizabeth Taylor Diamond, formerly known as the Krupp Diamond. It’s expected to sell for between $2.5 and $3.5 million, and was given to her as a gift by another husband, Richard Burton, in 1968.
Baubles aside, Taylor had her just-folks moments. How did she distinguish her mountain of Louis Vuitton luggage from someone else’s? By tagging each piece with a purple label reading “MINE!”The old bags - with labels still intact - will be auctioned off in three sets, each presumed to fetch somewhere between $2,000 and $5,000.
Also on display is a quartet of directors chairs, some of which have pouches for scripts attached. Among the outfits is a costume that Taylor wore in “Anne of the Thousand Days.” There’s also the green dress she wore for her second marriage to Burton in 1975. “And because it’s so sweet,” Barnhart said, “I love the book ‘Nibbles and Me’ that she wrote when she was very young about her pet chipmunk.”