Forrest Gump’s iconic ‘box of chocolates’ sold for $33,000
It’s one of those immortal movie lines that are right up there with Gone With The Wind’s “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”, Humphrey Bogart’s “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine”, and the Star Wars franchise’s “May the force be with you”.
“Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get” encapsulated the uplifting spirit of the 1994 Tom Hanks magnum opus Forrest Gump, and that movie’s most quoted lines.
The actual “box of chocolates” – the prop used in the movie, signed by Hanks himself – is now the property of the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not company, which purchased it at auction for US$25,000 (S$33,000).
Forrest Gump was directed by Robert Zemeckis, with Hanks in the lead role. It was based on the 1986 novel by Winston Groom.
The film tells the story of Forrest Gump, a simple but kindhearted man from Alabama who, despite his disabilities and low IQ, figured prominently in the lives of some of history’s most recognisable faces, including Elvis Presley, John Lennon and John F. Kennedy.
It follows his story’s arc, from being bullied as a child, to being a standout college athlete, a Vietnam War hero, a pop culture influencer, and a millionaire investor.
Through it all, he remains oblivious to what he has accomplished and how much he means to the people whose lives he touched, as he is singularly focused on winning the love of his childhood friend Jenny, who’s life story hopped from one disaster to another till it ended in a reckoning with Aids.
The film’s most memorable scene, though, was the opening, the camera following a white feather as it floats gently down to the ground and next to Forrest’s foot.
Forrest is sitting on a bus stop in Savannah, Georgia, next to a woman, with whom he strikes a conversation, even though the woman is only feigning interest.
On his lap sits a Russell Stover box of mixed chocolates. He takes one chocolate from it and tells the woman: “My mama always said, ‘Life is like a box of chocolates. You never who what you’re going to get’”.
He is, in a nutshell, telling the story of his colourful, magnificent life.
The box isn’t the only prop from the movie that have been put up for auction.
The iconic shoes Hanks wore for the scenes that showed him running coast-to-coast across the US and inspiring long-distance running – a pair of Nike Cortez – were put up for sale in 2019, with an asking price of at least £10,000 (S$16,000), but it was never revealed whether it was actually sold.
The box of chocolates adds to Ripley’s growing collection of pop culture artefacts that already includes the double-bladed lightsaber used by Darth Maul in Star Wars Episode 1: the Phantom Menace, the purple coat worn by the late rock icon Prince in hs Purple Rain stage performances, and the hand-notated address book previously owned by The Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein.
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