James Cameron’s Titanic’s famous door sold for $718,750 at auction. In Cameron’s hit romantic disaster film, Rose DeWitt Bukater (Kate Winslet) and Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) locate a wooden slab to float on after the ship has sunk. The young couple struggle to both clamber on, so Jack protects Rose by allowing her to climb aboard while he remains suspended in the icy ocean, where he dies, likely of hypothermia.
The iconic ornate Titanic door on which Winslet’s Rose DeWitt Bukater floats to survival, while DiCaprio’s Jack Dawson swims (and ultimately drowns) in the icy waters, is one of the most famous props from James Cameron’s 1997 film. In fact, according to the description on the prop’s auction listing, it isn’t even a door: “Often mistakenly referred to as a door, the ornate structure was in reality part of the door frame just above the first-class lounge entrance.”
It has been the source of heated debate for years, with many fans believing that there would have been enough room for both of the lovers had Winslet shifted over, given that the panel is eight feet long and 41 inches wide. The speculation was so intense that in 2022 Cameron conducted a “thorough forensic analysis” using two stunt people to see if both could have survived, and the answer was a resounding no. Anyway, regardless of how roomy the floating panel may have been, Jack “needed to die,” according to Cameron, who said, “It’s like Romeo and Juliet. It’s a movie about love sacrifice and mortality. The love is measured by the sacrifice.”
Other props from Cameron’s record-breaking 1997 film—which reigned as the highest-grossing film of all time until he broke his own record with the 2009 release of Avatar—on offer included the ship’s helm wheel, two costumes worn by DiCaprio, and the chiffon dress Rose wears as the ill-fated ship sinks.
