Vintage and Classic Hollywood original prop and wardrobe expert Rick Spector of Stairway to the Stars has contacted me this week with concerns about the authenticity of a wardrobe piece attributed to John Wayne listed in the “Cody Old West Show and Auction” scheduled for this weekend.
The specific offering is Lot 324, “John Wayne’s Red Shirt” (see LiveAuctioneers.com):
In the past few years, Rick has documented a number of eBay offerings which he has determined to be fraudulent in a topic on The Movie Prop Forum which has been ongoing with updates in 2006, 2007, and 2008 (see “Studio Labels up for sale on ebay…”).
Rick had archived many of these eBay offerings attributed to John Wayne, with consistently problematic wardrobe labels, as well as the subsequent suspensions of the seller or sellers on eBay (changed to “NARU” or “No Longer A Registered User” status), located in Kansas City, MO. Below are some of the eBay selling accounts identified:
- NOWTCB (NARU “No Longer A Registered User” Status)
- h2998 (NARU “No Longer A Registered User” Status)
- chesser7830 (NARU “No Longer A Registered User” Status)
Below is an excerpt from the e-mail Rick sent me this week (published with his permission and at his request – note that these are his personal views and opinions):
As I mentioned to you before, I archived this shirt in November of 2003, on eBay, as being sold from the seller in Kansas City I was following back then under a variety of names. He was NARU’d from eBay several times. His MO was faking (badly) Western Costume labels in trying to mimic Wayne and Elvis Presley screen used pieces. He achieved this by harvesting WCC labels from extra costumes, then sold on eBay for as little as $35.00, bleaching them and re-typing (often using the same defective typewriter which only half hit on a few numbers) made up numbers and the actor’s name. Since he had to remove and resew labels in the garments, they are always restitched, often badly. The bleaching often caused smudging and staining. Old yellowed labels became white and stiff from the process. He once even used an image of the label on the table before putting it on the ‘new’ costume in one of his listings. The Movie Prop Forum has many of these examples archived over the years.
Please examine the enclosed images which are from the auction listing. The shirt they are selling is a modern Wah Maker copy of the famous Wayne bib shirt, but differs in the length of the bib (Wayne’s is nearly waist length while the copy is chest high) and the number of buttons used – three instead of two. The original tapers, while the copy is nearly square.
The label is folded and restiched in white thread. The style denotes the mid 1970s, yet Wayne wore this style shirt predominately in the 1930s and 1940s. Most telling, however, is the use of a five digit inventory number – not achieved by Western, in the post war period, until they went to bar codes after 1990, almost a dozen years after Wayne’s death!
Since, this shirt first appeared on eBay in 2003, it is now stated it came from the Western Costume II sale from July 1994. There is such a lot, without an image nor label information, that could be this shirt. But, as I attended that sale, and examined all the Wayne pieces, I can state that this is not that shirt. Using copies of old sale’s catalogs is a device used by the source of these fake costumes. Often, he culls real WCC numbers and proceeds to use them on his made up pieces, as he does not understand how they worked. He has used labels from the 1940s for costumes he contended were from the 1960s and vice versa. He has repeated the same number, for the same star, for films made decades apart. All are giveaways to his fraud.
I sent the Auction House an email detailing what I have stated here with my auction house references. No response and the piece, as of tonight, is still in the sale. Unfortunate, in that this particular venue has no history of dealing in such pieces in the past that I have noticed.
Below is an compilation of suspect eBay auction offerings compiled by Rick and published on the Movie Prop Forum in July 2007 which illustrates his observations about the asset tags attached to these wardrobe pieces:
Below is a direct comparison between the label attached to the red bib shirt in the eBay auction compilation above and the same label as depicted in the current Cody Old West Show & Auction:
Note the same unique trimmed outline with rough cuts, the same typeface, same typed content, same partially missed “3”, same crease under the heading, matching positioning of printed characters, matching stitching, etc.
Below is a direct comparison between the photos of the shirts as depicted in both venues:
Rick Spector may have more to contribute, in the form of a “Reader Comment” response to this article over the next few days; any such updates will be noted in the Original Prop Blog Twitter feed.
Jason DeBord