The story of the brown satin dress magically travels through our marriage and life together. The story started in 1970 when MGM fell on hard times and decided to sell off thousands of props and costumes. We drove to Los Angeles for the auction and purchased Judy Garland’s brown satin dress from The Pirate. It was easily the most beautiful dress we saw, and we didn’t really know a lot about the movie at that time.

Eight years later we flew to Los Angeles to attend Sid Luft’s sale of all things Judy Garland. He had thousands of movie stills haphazardly spread out on tables at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. For $1. each we purchased all The Pirate photos we could find.

And finally, this year we continued to add to our photo collection of Judy in the brown satin dress. Liza Minnelli auctioned off thousands of items in a three-day sale including more than 30 photos of Judy in our dress. Some were publicity stills but most were personal photos of Judy with her baby daughter Liza and husband, Vincente Minnelli.

The dress weaves an amazing story through our lives and gives us the opportunity to reflect on how lucky we are.

This book is dedicated to Marianne’s mum, Harriet Massoni, to say thanks again for loaning us the $300 that got the adventure started.