Regina King played Sister Night in HBO’s award-winning “Watchmen” series. Items from “Watchmen” are on the auction block with a part of the proceeds going to Greenwood Rising in Tulsa. Courtesy, HBO
Nearly 300 items from HBO’s set-in-Tulsa “Watchmen” series are on the auction block and some of the proceeds will go to Greenwood Rising in Tulsa.
Heritage Screenbid, in conjunction with HBO, is auctioning the items from the award-winning series, which elevated awareness about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and the destruction of Black Wall Street.
Said a news release issued Friday: “Heritage Screenbid and HBO are proud to announce that a portion of the proceeds from the auction will go to Greenwood Rising, the museum and memorial meant to ensure that the Tulsa Race Massacre is never again kept out of the history texts.”
“It is our mission to educate the world about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre,” Dr. Raymond Doswell, executive director of Greenwood Rising, said in the news release. “In its own way, ‘Watchman’ supported our mission by generating conversations and questions. We are thankful not only for the proceeds of this auction, which will go toward programming but for the continued elevation of this important history.”
Damon Lindelof’s nine-episode series was rewarded with 26 Primetime Emmy Awards nominations and 11 wins, including one for outstanding limited series. “Watchmen” built upon mythology from an acclaimed 1985 graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.
Items available in the auction are costumes, screen-used props and pieces of sets, including a detailed center console, steering wheel and bucket seats from the reconstructed Owlship that took flight in the first episode. With its working toggles and buttons, the center console looks like it was yanked from a working spaceship. The yellow timepiece in its center is the Watchmen’s signature doomsday clock.
“When HBO told us they were ready to release assets, I jumped on the first flight to their storage facility,” Jax Strobel, Heritage Screenbid’s managing director, said. “I can’t begin to describe the schoolboy excitement I experienced digging through boxes and pallets of costumes, props and set dressing.”
In most series, there are only a handful of memorable costumes and meaningful props worth owning, relishing and coveting, according to the news release, which said everything in the “Watchmen” auction means something — the newspapers with headlines about phony alien invasions or John Grisham retiring from the Supreme Court, the flier dropped by Germans during World War I, the framed print of Tulsa from 1918 and the 51-star American flags.
The release said nearly every stitch of clothing worn in the series is available — often in multiple iterations, including five versions of Regina King’s black-hooded Sister Night costume, which evolved over the series’ run.
King (Angela/Sister Night) starred as a Tulsa cop who is bound to the city’s horrific past. The release said her entire story is contained in the auction, from her Department of Justice personnel file to the Greenwood Center for Cultural Heritage acorns containing her family tree. Sister Night’s 1987 Buick Grand National (“Angela’s Batmobile, as it were”) is on the auction block, too.
The auction is open and will end April 5.
Heritage Auctions is the largest fine art and collectibles auction house founded in the United States and has offices in New York, Dallas, Beverly Hills, Chicago, Palm Beach, London, Paris, Geneva, Amsterdam, Brussels and Hong Kong.