Controversial ‘Titanic’ door sells for more than $718K at auction

The part of a door that controversially fit Kate Winslet‘s Rose — but not Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Jack — at the end of Titanic has fetched a fortune at auction. As part of Heritage Auctions’ Treasures of Planet Hollywood event, the door sold for $718,750 when the hammer fell, ABC Audio has confirmed.

By comparison, the $525,000 someone spent on Indy’s whip from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and the $350,000 the winning bidder parted with for Bill Murray‘s Kingpin bowling ball seem like downright bargains.

The door, and why Rose didn’t suggest Jack climb on board for safety as she did, has been the center of snarking since James Cameron‘s 1997 Oscar-winning blockbuster debuted.

Mythbusters confirmed years ago that the death of DiCaprio’s steerage class scamp was “needless,” as he easily could have fit on the piece of wood from the sunken ship.

However, even though Cameron took part in the Mythbusters ep, in a recent National Geographic special Titanic: 25 Years Later with James Cameron, the famous perfectionist tested and retested the theory again himself, ultimately declaring “Jack might’ve lived, but there’s a lot of variables … I think his thought process was, ‘I’m not going to do one thing that jeopardized her,’ and that’s 100 percent in character.”

He also allowed if he could have shot the scene over, he would have “made the raft smaller so there’s no doubt.”

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