Princess Diana’s Blouse, an Animatronic E.T. Head, and ‘Big Lebowski’ Robe Headline Memorabilia Auction

The blouse Princess Diana wore for her engagement portrait, E.T.’s head, and the robe “The Dude” wore in The Big Lebowski are just some of the wide range of instantly recognisable pop culture artefacts going up for auction next month.

Julien’s Auctions is partnering with Turner Classic Movies for the Dec 14-17 sale, titled Hollywood Legends.

“Associated with phrases such as ‘Danger, Will Robinson,’ ‘E.T. phone home,’ and ‘Avengers, assemble!,’ these iconic collectibles provide a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for fans, pop culture enthusiasts, and collectors to own a piece of Hollywood history,” Martin Nolan, Julien’s co-founder and executive director, said in a statement announcing the sale Monday.

The sale comprises three components taking place over four days at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills (Dec. 14), Julien’s facility in Gardena, Calif. (Dec. 15-17), and online at JuliensLive.com.

Featuring props, costumes, and models from some of the most iconic science fiction, fantasy, action, and superhero franchises dating back to the 1950s, the first program—billed as Robots, Wizards, Heroes & Aliens—will be held during the sale’s first two days (Dec. 14-15). In celebration of Warner Bros.’ 100th anniversary, an assortment of items from the studio’s biggest film franchises, such as Harry Potter and Batman, will be offered.

Princess Diana’s Engagement Blouse
Julien’s Auctions

The marquee item is an original mechanical animatronic E.T. head—created by the legendary special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi and as seen throughout Steven Spielberg’s 1982 film E.T. the Extra Terrestrial—that’s estimated to fetch between US$800,000 and US$1 millionThis model comes from Rambaldi’s own collection, as did the animatronic figure of E.T. sold by Julien’s Auctions last November for US$2.56 million.

Also sure to draw heightened interest is one of the most famous robots of all time, the Model B-9 from Lost In Space. One of only two full-scale figures that were made for the pioneering 1960s science fiction series, the still-functional model is expected to sell for between US$300,000 and US$500,000.

Fans of the Coen Brothers’ 1998 classic film The Big Lebowski will focus on day three (Dec. 16) of the sale, which will celebrate the film’s 25th anniversary. More than 250 items, including storyboards and costumes, will go under the hammer, with a portion of the proceeds going to Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign.

Expected to draw the highest bids are a pair of lots featuring items worn by Jeff Bridges in the title role. Estimated to go for between US$30,000 and US$50,000, The Dude ensemble—which appears throughout the film, including in the memorable opening scene—consists of a light-brown knitted fleece bathrobe and an off-white cotton Jockey T-shirt. An original pair of sunglasses featuring nylon frames with amber-colored polycarbonate lenses is expected to sell in the neighbourhood of US$20,000 to US$30,000.

Glamour, Grace and Greatness, the third component of the auction, will close out the sale’s final day (Dec. 17) with items created by revered designers and worn by some of the greatest style icons of all time.

Headliner status goes to a piece from one of the most iconic images ever taken of Princess Diana: the blush pink chiffon blouse worn in her 1981 engagement portrait—famously captured by the world-renowned photographer Lord Snowden for the February 1981 issue of Vogue—is estimated to fetch between US$80,000 and $100,000. With its ruff-like collar and loose pleats to the front, the garment was created by designers David and Elizabeth Emanuel, who would later design Princess Diana’s wedding gown. The blouse, which Elizabeth Emanuel sold from her archives in 2010, was admired by millions when it was previously on display at London’s Kensington Palace as part of the exhibition “Diana: Her Fashion Story” that ran from 2017 to 2019.

E.T’s Animatronic head
Julien’s Auctions

Another famous piece sure to draw intense bidding is a ballerina-length evening dress from the Moroccan-British fashion designer Jacques Azagury that was worn by Princess Diana in Florence, Italy on April 23, 1985. Featuring a black velvet bodice with embroidered stars in metallic thread, and a two-tier royal blue organza skirt with sash and bow, the dress is estimated to sell for between US$100,000 and US$200,000.

Other highlights include Givenchy-designed garments worn by Audrey Hepburn in one of her most memorable roles as Regina “Reggie” Lampert in the 1963 film Charade. A marigold wool coat is expected to sell for between US$20,000 and US$40,000, while a cream wool dress is estimated to earn between US$30,000 and US$50,000.

Fans of timeless classics can bid on iconic pieces such as the dramatic black satin sleeveless gown worn by Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond in the 1950 film Sunset Boulevard and the blue and white cotton gingham pinafore worn by Margaret O’Brien as Tootie Smith in the 1944 musical comedy Meet Me in St. Louis.

OpenAI says it is scrapping the release of its next-generation AI model over safety concerns that researchers raised during internal testing, in one of the clearest signs so far that agent misbehavior could stymie the industry’s rapid progression.

The move follows a summer punctuated by reports of artificial-intelligence systems industrywide going rogue, and marks a rare case of a major AI developer ditching a new release because of safety concerns.

The company had planned to launch the model, known as GPT-6.1 Astra, in the coming days or weeks, aiming for an October debut. The model was more capable than the company’s previous models in completing challenging tasks from end-to-end without human assistance, as well as writing.

The company instead will focus on improving the safety of future models, which it expects to be even more capable.

Saachi Jain, OpenAI’s head of safety systems, said in an interview that GPT-6.1 Astra regressed in two areas. Compared with its predecessor, GPT-6 Astra, the model performed poorly on tests measuring alignment, or how well the model adheres to what humans would like it to do. Specifically, GPT-6.1 Astra showed higher levels of deception: It wasn’t always honest about telling users of the actions it did or didn’t take.

Another issue was what OpenAI calls “scope authorization,” meaning that GPT-6.1 Astra would push ahead on a task without asking the user for permission, and would at times reach for external tools and services even if it might be unsafe.

“For anything regarding safety and alignment, there’s a trade off,” Jain said. “You really do need to find what’s the right line between staying within scope, but also avoiding laziness in terms of how the model actually pursues tasks even when it hits friction.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attended a United Nations Security Council meeting about AI last week. Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images

While GPT-6.1 Astra improved in areas such as “model laziness,” Jain said it didn’t quite meet OpenAI’s bar for safety and alignment, so the company decided not to launch the model publicly.

The announcement comes one day ahead of OpenAI’s annual developer conference in San Francisco. In the past, OpenAI has used the conference as an opportunity to launch new models and services that reduce costs for software developers—a segment the ChatGPT-maker competes with rival AI company Anthropic to win over.

In recent weeks, OpenAI and Anthropic have called on industry partners to slow down the development of cutting-edge AI models and invest in safety standards, noting they will temper the pace of their own internal AI progress.

OpenAI says it is working to investigate a range of agent security incidents that it has discovered in recent months, and address the safety issues underneath them. As part of the work, the company has implemented a new monitoring system to catch AI-agent misbehavior more quickly, and started requiring engineers to use stronger security guardrails for testing its AI systems.

Earlier this summer hundreds of OpenAI’s internal agents, which were tasked with completing a cybersecurity test, ended up hacking into the AI company Hugging Face. Since then, high-profile organizations such as the Australian government and United Nations discovered that OpenAI’s agents used similar, but less extensive, techniques to gain access to their websites.

Many of the publicly known agent-security incidents involved OpenAI’s internal AI models that were never slated for public release.

Last week, OpenAI said it paused training on its most capable AI models after an AI agent slipped through a gap in the company’s internet restrictions to query a public chatbot. The company said its new monitoring systems flagged the incident within 15 minutes, and training on these models remains paused.

GPT-6.1 Astra isn’t one of those models, but a different case, the company said.

“We want to make sure our model development is safe no matter whether that’s in the company, or when we ship it to users,” Jain said. “But when we ship it to users, we have an extremely high bar in terms of safety and alignment.”

While the company decided not to ship GPT-6.1 Astra, it hopes to use the same base model to do additional reinforcement learning runs, and create future generations of its GPT-6 models.

OpenAI plans to conduct several deep dives to identify the root cause of the problems identified in GPT-6.1 Astra, Jain said. The work includes ensuring that OpenAI’s reinforcement learning environments are rewarding the right type of behavior, Jain added, though she noted the company would investigate all stages of model development.

AI companies have begun to draw scrutiny from policymakers and public officials, who are paying attention to the rapid development of the technology. Later this week, a Senate subcommittee is holding a hearing with third party AI researchers titled, “Rogue AI: Securing the Homeland Against AI Agent Attacks.”

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, a Republican, sued OpenAI in June, claiming that the company and Chief Executive Sam Altman knowingly released an unsafe product and ignored warnings that it could harm users.

In a motion for temporary injunction filed Monday, Uthmeier sought to prevent OpenAI from developing new AI models without third-party approved safeguards, stop ChatGPT from soliciting user engagement and limit the company’s ability to advertise ChatGPT as safe.

Tech companies claim they “cannot stop barreling forward with their potentially civilization-ending endeavors unless they are forced to do so by the government,” Uthmeier said in the filing. “The Florida Attorney General is answering your cry for help.”

An OpenAI spokeswoman said that people want to know AI is being developed safely, “and that starts with what companies like ours do ourselves.”

“Governments have an important role to play in setting robust safety standards for AI, and we’re committed to working with Florida and other states on advancing pragmatic AI policies that apply to the entire AI industry—not just one company,” she said.