Famous Mermaid Tails

In 2004 I attended my first San Diego ComicCon. My aim was to go down every single aisle and see every single booth and go to see every single presentation and panel session of personal interest that I had highlighted in the program. I succeeded on all counts except where sessions were running concurrently and I was faced with a difficult choice of narrowing it down to one. Outside of that I managed to help Jozef complete a comic book series where he had a handful of missing issues. 

I also picked up lots of freebies on the way including a fabulous black vinyl and mesh Highlander (the movie) sports bag which to this day reminds me of Mary Poppins travel bag because you can fit so much into it. (I'll try and pack a lamp and a plant into it one day!) One of the many catalogues that caught my eye and which I picked up was called Profiles in History: Hollywood Auction 19. It had a photo of a Wah Chang green bejewelled dragon on the cover – armature from the film The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (MGM, 1962). I flicked through it and it was chock full of all kinds of Hollywood memorabilia including costumes, photos, posters, busts and props. 

Over the last week I have been madly decluttering again and I came across the catalogue. Flipping through it I found two items on interest for this Black Mermaid blog crowd – Madison's (Darryl Hannah's) mermaid's tail from Splash, and Jim Carey's mermaid's tail from a Herb Ritt's Rolling Stone magazine shoot (13-27 July, 1995). Thought you might be interested in both pieces although obviously they are both long gone and have been snatched up by some avid collectors somewhere. Don't know how much they sold for, but the asking price for the orange tail was quite understandably (knowing its place in Disney/Touchstone Picture's movie cultural history) $15,000 to $20,000. The green tail was listed as $1000 to $1500.