15 Iconic Props From Classic Movies That Were Thrown Out Like Garbage
These days, the preservation and trade of movie props is big business. Like, a strand of hair that once touched a strand of hair in Ariana Grande’s Wicked wig will fetch you thousands of dollars at auction. Back before fandom was a cultural identity, though, props were just that: tools that became junk once they’d served their purpose. And they were often treated like it.
The Death Star
The original model of the Death Star featured in A New Hope wasn’t just thrown in a trash can -- it became one. After the studio defaulted on the storage facility housing the old props, it turned up in a country western bar in Missouri, where it was used as a waste receptacle. It may have been no moon, but it did come out at night.
Rosebud
Until 1984, one of the three known models of Citizen Kane’s cherished boyhood sled was assumed missing, but it turned out it was just sitting around in storage on the studio lot. One of the workers assigned to clear it out recognized the sled and alerted director Joe Dante instead of keeping it for himself. That’s a real one right there.
The Pursuit Special
The car driven by Mel Gibson in the first two Mad Max movies was so tricked out that the studio couldn’t find anyone willing to buy it. As a result, it was sent to a salvage yard and scheduled for wrecking until passersby noticed the eight side pipes sticking out of the mostly concealed carcass.
The Emerald City
In 1970, MGM was taken over by new management whose philosophy was quite literally “out with the old,” resulting in the destruction of untold treasures. One of them, the matte painting depicting the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz, was thrown in the dumpster out back without a second thought. Fortunately, film historians were closely monitoring the situation and swooped in to rescue the whole verdant metropolis.
Tara
After filming, the O’Hara family plantation was broken down and bought by a Georgia senator’s wife for inclusion in a Gone With the Wind museum she planned to open. When that never happened, the pieces were abandoned “in a barn piled up among old junk” until the 2010s, when the owner of a local historical tour company somehow recognized that the lumber was special lumber.
Hoggle
After filming Labyrinth, Jim Hensen flew home with the puppet that played Hoggle in his luggage, which was lost by the airline. Apparently, he wasn’t one of Hensen’s favorite children, because he languished in the lost luggage department until he turned up in a shipment acquired by the Unclaimed Baggage Center, an Alabama museum where he’s definitely the main attraction.
Bruce the Shark
Before it made them all the money, the studio that funded Jaws and its troubled crew weren’t the biggest fans of each other, so after filming was complete, Universal “just dumped the sharks in the back lot,” according to production designer Joe Alves. It ended up in a junkyard, where nobody ever thought about it again until the owner’s son recognized one of film history’s greatest villains.
Space Station V
In the early ‘70s, an art student spotted one of the model space stations used in 2001: A Space Odyssey just sitting outside a local dump about 20 miles from the studio. He couldn’t take it with him because he was only driving a motorcycle, and by the time he returned, it had been destroyed by little hooligans, hopefully just like the movie’s opening scene.
The War Machines
The spaceships seen in 1953’s War of the Worlds were made of copper, and once filming was complete, all but one of them (which was borrowed for Robinson Crusoe on Mars) were melted down for scrap. Maybe they melted down the Oscar those spaceships won, too.
The Scrumdiddlyumptuous Bars
Cheaping out on a German set ended up costing the Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory crew. “They had to almost immediately clear the studios because they were filming Cabaret with Liza Minnelli there so everything got thrown in the skip," the owner of the only surviving Scrumdiddlyumptuous bar told the BBC. He only got his hands on it via a family of collectors who “decided to dispose of everything.”
King Kong’s New York
As a child actor in the ‘60s, Barry Livingston’s “true childhood playground Desilu Studios,” where he and his brother played with the model of New York City destroyed by King Kong in 1933. One day, “we arrived at the studio, and the model buildings had vanished,” he wrote in his 2011 memoir, learning that they’d been destroyed “to make room for the new props.” Talk about irony.
The Leg Lamp
There’s a good reason A Christmas Story’s seed of marital discord was discarded, much like its onscreen counterpart. All three models made for the movie were broken over the course of filming the “Battle of the Lamp.”
Zuzu’s Flower Petals
According to Karolyn Grimes, who played George Bailey’s daughter Zuzu in It’s a Wonderful Life, there was a good reason the petals from the flower she won at school that George kept in his pocket throughout the movie weren’t saved, too. “I'm sure they threw it away,” she said. “It was a flower!” That’s the hazard of using the real stuff.
The Horse Head
Speaking of the real stuff, Francis Ford Coppola didn’t think the fake horse heads designed by the studio looked authentic enough, so the remains of Jack Woltz’s companion weren’t fake. The Godfather’s art director secured one from a dog food plant, and taxidermy was apparently deemed in poor taste, so the head was cremated once it did its job.
The Goonies Map
The map that led the Goonies to treasure was given to then-13-year-old star Sean Astin as a keepsake, but while he was away filming another movie, his mother, TV star Patty Duke, sold their house. When he couldn’t find it at their new house, she told him she might have thrown it away, or maybe it was still “out there somewhere.” If it is, it’s worth hundreds of thousands. Guys. Guys. The Goonies map became a real treasure map.