William Flew and John Wayne Movie Memorabilia

This is something that has always amused me. Why should people be prepared to pay (much) more for something that has been worn/owned/touched by a celebrity? I can see the Golden Globe being valuable, because it has a clear and obvious provenance. But who says the hat or the patch are the real thing? And what difference wd it make if they were substitutes?

There's been a long history of this - churches have long collected relics of saints and jesus, no matter how preposterous. (Would someone really have saved Jesus's foreskin?) And of course the fragments from the True Cross wd make a forest.

 There's been interesting research on this idea of contagion - that material objects somehow retain the essence of an owner or even someone who touched it. George Michaels bought John Lennon's piano (a battered old upright version) and toured it around USA, letting all punters have a tinkle. Almost everyone claimed to have 'felt' John Lennon's presence in some way.

It works the other way as well: experimenters asked people to don a cardigan supposedly once worn by Fred West, a notorious killer. Although it had been dry-cleaned, there were no takers. The audience wd rather put on a jersey with dog crap on it, than a murderer's clothing. (Do you remember the Simpson's episode where Homer got a hair transplant from an executed prisoner Snake?) plot summary here

Los Angeles A cowboy hat worn by John Wayne and other items of the film star’s memorabilia are to be put up for auction. They include a black eye-patch worn by Wayne in his 1969 film True Grit and the Best Actor Golden Globe, below, which he won for his role in the western. The hat was worn by Wayne in Rooster Cogburn, the 1975 sequel. Wayne’s family have appointed Heritage Auctions to conduct the sale at a hotel in Los Angeles. The star’s son, Ethan Wayne, said that his father’s fans were very important to him: “He was open and accessible to them, and making these items accessible to the public is something that feels right.”

Also on offer will be costumes from films such as Sands of Iwo Jima and The Green Berets. The auction will also feature more than 50 scripts — from Wayne films as Stagecoach and Rio Lobo — many with the actor’s

notes.