KEY POINTS:
LONDON - Alec Guinness's Star Wars cloak was sold for £45,000 ($127,344) today alongside James Bond's tuxedo and Mel Gibson's kilt at one of London's biggest sales of film memorabilia.
From Richard Burton's sandals in Cleopatra to Ava Gardner's pantaloons and a chain mail tunic worn by Sean Connery, the auction covered more than 50 years of screen history.
Film fans were bidding for over 350 iconic pieces made by the London theatrical costumier Angels for blockbuster film franchises such as Harry Potter, Superman and Indiana Jones.
Angels is selling the costumes because of the high cost of storing and insuring them.
"The flip-side of creating such iconic costumes, that become so very famous and so firmly associated with key movies, is that they can never be used in other films," said the company's Chairman Tim Angel.
In the first half of the sale, a classic dinner jacket worn by Sean Connery in the James Bond film Thunderball was sold for £28,000.
An outfit worn by Tom Baker in the television series Doctor Who fetched £20,500 from a telephone bidder, ten times the expected price.
Silence fell in the packed auction room packed as anonymous bidders took the sale of the flamboyant burgundy frock coat, tweed waistcoat and trousers past the £20,000 mark.
The tense mood was broken by laughter as a model dressed in a second burgundy Doctor Who coat twirled to theme music.
The coat was snapped up for £7,000 by the same telephone bidder, who had racked up a bill of over £60,000 in the first hour.
But buyers were waiting for the star lot at the Bonhams sale, the brown hooded cloak worn by Guinness when he played Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi, which fetched just under its £50,000-60,000 estimate.
The outfit of Scottish patriot William Wallace, played by Gibson in Braveheart, was sold for £21,000 while a metal knights helmet worn by Terry Jones in Monty Python and the Holy Grail went for £10,000.
The sale also traces James Bond's changing taste in fashion, from traditional English tailoring to designer Italian suits.
Items sold in the first half of the sale included David Niven's trilby hat in the 1967 film Casino Royale which went for £2,200, 20 times the estimated price and Pierce Brosnan's three-piece Brioni suit which sold for £7,200.
Bonhams said it was believed to be Britain's biggest auction of film and television costumes.
- REUTERS
