Titanic prop that saved Rose and sparked debate sold at auction for $700,000ExBulletin

Some of the most iconic props in Hollywood history went up for auction last week, from Indiana Jones' trusty whip to Forrest Gump's assortment of chocolates to The shiny.

But the best-selling item was a piece of debris, even though it has sparked imagination and debate for more than a quarter of a century.

“The wooden panel of Titanic It saved Rose but, controversially, it wasn't Jack who was king of the auction, realizing $718,750 to go to the top of the five-day event,” the auction house said. Heritage Auctions auction. said in a press release.

THE “Hero Floating Wood Sign” played a iconic role in the 1997 blockbuster. As the Titanic sinks, stranding passengers in the frigid waters of the Atlantic Ocean, Kate Winslet's character Rose manages to float on a piece of door while Leonardo DiCaprio's Jack clings on at the edge, ultimately succumbing to hypothermia.

“The biggest scene, really, the climactic scene if you will,” the auctioneer said, introducing the batch item. “There are several big scenes but that’s it, it’s goodbye.”

Bidding started at $60,000 and ended five minutes later at $575,000 (total cost included additional fees). In the livestreamed video, the crowd can be heard cheering warmly as the auctioneer congratulates the winner, whom he calls “Mr. Green.”

The five-day “Treasures of Planet Hollywood” auction raised more than $15.6 million from more than 5,500 bidders from around the world, spread across some 1,600 lots, according to Heritage Auctions , who said there were so many bidding wars that “we lost track.”

“There was a generational shift towards where these massive franchises and blockbusters of the 1980s and 1990s had become Alone at homes, the Indiana Jones films, the Die hards and, of course, Titanic are now collectors' favorites,” Executive Vice President Joe Maddalena said in a statement provided to NPR. “Collectors are finally rewarding these artifacts for what they are: cultural artifacts akin to the fine art of yesteryear. ”

Five of the best lots came from Titanicincluding the ship's steering wheel ($200,000), Rose's water-soaked chiffon dress ($118,750), and the ship's brass engine order telegraph ($81,250), another sign that the Public fascination with the century-old wreck is going nowhere.

The prop is modeled on a real structure

The 8-foot-long, 41-inch-wide piece of driftwood is made of balsa and intricately carved with rococo designs like floral accents and scrolling curves, according to the auction house.

A plaque on the back reads: “Leonardo DiCaprio / Kate Winslet / 'Titanic' / Twentieth Century Fox / Paramount Pictures, 1997 / Floating sign he uses to save his life in the film's sinking sequence, in their roles as ” Jack Dawson” and “Rose DeWitt Bukater.” Courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox.”

Heritage Auctions claims the prop was based on “the most famous complete debris from the 1912 tragedy”, which is believed to be part of the door frame just above the entrance to the first class lounge.

Researchers hypothesize that the panel represents the exact area where the ship split in two and rose to the surface of the water when the ship sank. The auction house notes that it closely resembles a particular artifact held at the Maritime Museum in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Director James Cameron visited the museum while filming the film and consulted an American expert who had participated in the research there, according to the Maritime Museum.

“This made it possible, among other things, to build faithful replicas of the deckchairs and in particular a replica of a large piece of carved oak [paneling] to build,” he added. “It was used in the film's climactic death scene where Rose's character clings to floating wreckage.”

The piece of wood is at the heart of an ongoing debate

Rabid fans have argued for decades that there was room on the board for both lovers and that Rose could have saved Jack and their star-crossed romance by simply running away.

Cameron absolutely disagrees, because he expressed clearly in several interviews over the years.

“When Jack puts Rose on the raft, he tries to get on the raft, he's not an idiot, he doesn't want to die and the raft sinks; it kind of backfires,” Cameron told IGN in 2012. “And so it's clear that there's really only enough buoyancy available for one person. So he makes the decision to let her be that person.”

MythBusters even teamed up with Cameron in an episode the same year to address the issue, which he called “the most requested myth in MythBuster history.”

They concluded that both Rose and Jack could have stayed afloat and avoided hypothermia, but only if they had remembered to strap her life jacket underneath to improve her buoyancy. That's not the point, Cameron said at the time (he said five years later that he loved working with the MythBusters, “but they're full of shit”).

“The script says Jack is dead. He has to die,” he said in the episode. “So maybe we made a mistake and the board should have been a tiny bit smaller, but the guy is going to fall.”

In 2022, 25 years after the film's release, Cameron said he had commissioned a scientific study in hopes of closing the door on the debate once and for all.

The results, published in a National Geographic Special last year, suggested that in certain scenarios, Jack and Rose could have survived On the makeshift raft, they learned more about hypothermia and thermodynamics.

“In a test pool experiment, we can't simulate the terror, the adrenaline, all the things that worked against them,” Cameron said. “He couldn't have anticipated what we know today about hypothermia. He couldn't have conducted many different experiments to see what worked best.”

Ultimately, Cameron argued that Jack's death was necessary both as a plot device and a character choice. But he said he would have done it differently based on what he knows now: “I would have made the raft smaller, so there's no doubt.”