Titanic door prop from iconic scene sells for over $700,000 at auction

The iconic door prop from the 1997 blockbuster film Titanic sold for a whopping $718,750.

Culture

A piece of cinematic history fetched a staggering sum at Heritage Auctions, as the iconic door prop from the 1997 blockbuster film Titanic sold for a whopping $718,750.

The door, central to one of the movie’s most memorable scenes where Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Jack, sacrificed himself in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic while Kate Winslet’s character, Rose, lay atop the door to survive, captured the imagination of movie enthusiasts worldwide.

The door emerged as the evening’s top lot, ahead of the whip wielded by Indiana Jones in The Temple of Doom, which fetched $525,000, Entertainment Weekly reports.

The film’s director, James Cameron, reportedly put the debate surrounding the door’s buoyancy to rest during Titanic’s 25th anniversary in 2022.

“We have done a scientific study to put this whole thing to rest and drive a stake through its heart once and for all,” Cameron revealed in an interview while promoting Avatar: The Way of Water.

“We took two stunt people who were the same body mass of Kate and Leo, and we put sensors all over them and inside them, and we put them in ice water, and we tested to see whether they could have survived through a variety of methods, and the answer was, there was no way they both could have survived. Only one could survive,” he added.

Among the items available for auction were Marilyn Monroe’s on-screen dress, Jack Nicholson’s iconic ax from the “Hereeee’s Johnny” scene in The Shining, and an authentic Stormtrooper blaster from the original Star Wars film released in 1977. Additionally, various artifacts from Titanic, such as the ship’s helm wheel and Rose’s distinctive white, pink, and lavender chiffon dress, were also included in the auction lineup.