The prop door used to hold Jack and Rose above water in “Titanic” recently sold at an auction for over $700,000.
According to The Washington Post, the iconic prop from the 1997 blockbuster beat out both the “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” bullwhip ($525,000) and the ax from ”The Shining” ($125,000) as the most expensive listing over a four-day memorabilia auction.
Additionally, the “Titanic” helm wheel replica and the dress actress Kate Winslet wore during the ship’s sinking were also listed at the auction, according to Time.
Bidding for the door started at $60,000 and within six minutes got to $700,000, ending up with the winning bid of $718,750, per The Washington Post.
It’s not quite a door
Heritage Auctions — the Dallas-based auction house that sold the “Titanic” item — claimed the prop has often been misinterpreted as a door, instead labeling it as a carved “balsa wood” door frame based on actual debris from the Titanic ship.
The story goes that the actual door frame was located “above the first-class lounge entrance,” per CBS News. It’s supposed that when the ship split in half, the frame had “come from the area of division, rising to the surface as the ship sank.”
The frame was then salvaged and eventually displayed at the Maritime Museum in Halifax, Nova Scotia — where director James Cameron reportedly received inspiration for the prop wood.
Who gave away the memorabilia?
The memorabilia, according to The Washington Post, were all sold by restaurant and resort chain Planet Hollywood. Its recent listing of various cinema props to the auction house brought in a total of $15 million, ranking “among the most lucrative auctions of Hollywood memorabilia in industry history.”
Joe Maddalena, Heritage Auctions’ executive vice president, said in a statement to The Washington Post, “The extraordinary success of this auction proves what I’ve known all along: The interest in and appetite for modern-movie props and costumes — all of which were once displayed in Planet Hollywoods worldwide or part of their legendary archives — is profound, deep and insatiable.”
The ‘Titanic’ controversy
It’s one of the most iconic scenes in cinema: Among the floating debris, Jack lets Rose lie safely on top of the door while he stays in the water, hanging on the side.
But there has been speculation that Jack could’ve stayed on top of the wood and survived alongside Rose. This speculation even prompted a “MythBusters” episode finding that if Rose tied her lifejacket to the bottom of the door, then it could’ve supported Jack as well, per CBS News.
Cameron has tried to dispute these claims in recent years. He told the Daily Beast in 2017, “You read page 147 of the script and it says, ‘Jack gets off the board and gives his place to her so that she can survive.’ It’s that simple.”
He even revealed in 2022 that he commissioned a study to prove that only one person could’ve stayed atop of the wood panel. “(Jack) needed to die,” Cameron said to People.
The study’s results were highlighted in a National Geographic documentary in 2023 — released the same year as the 25th anniversary of “Titanic,” according to Time.