Iconic Stanley Kubrick Props Hit the Auction Block

Before 2001: A Space Odyssey, the high-water mark of science fiction movies had been the 1956 MGM epic Forbidden Planet. When the groundbreaking film wrapped, its props, costumes and even Robby the Robot ended up in the prop house at Metro to be used again by new productions. Seeing the iconic silhouettes from the Oscar-nominated film show up in campy films like Zsa Zsa Gabor’s Queen of Outer Space and (gasp) The Three Stooges in Orbit convinced Stanley Kubrick to order the highly detailed miniatures created for his space picture destroyed when the film was completed. Star Child prop from 2001: A Space OdysseyCredit: Photo courtesy Bonhams In 2015, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures acquired the last surviving spaceship from 2001, the Aries 1B Trans-Lunar Space Shuttle. When it was discovered in a barn, it was filthy, in pieces and filled with beetles. The Academy paid a reported $344,000 for the piece. Nearly three decades after the filmmaker s death, a cache of props a