Movie and Radio Museums--Who Has What?

Museums everywhere slug it out for dibs on artifacts. Sometimes their fights make the front page--as when Italy went after the J. Paul Getty Museum, threatening its former curator with jail because of certain treasures that Italy feels were acquired illegally (looted and sold on the black market, IOW).

Museums that deal with show biz memorabilia have it even harder. They're competing with EBay auctions, superstars and their families (and maybe their lawyers!) and big money collectors like the Hard Rock Cafe.

The Los Angeles Times ran a story on October 26 about the Smithsonian National Museum of American History's entertainment collection. The Times links have a habit of disappearing, so I won't use it.

Here's a few choice goodies:

• Dorothy's ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz
• Dustin Hoffman's bogus breasts from Tootsie
• Rocky's boxing gloves, autographed by Sylvester Stallone
• Bruce Willis' undershirt from Die Hard

What's more interesting is what the museum doesn't have--the elusive treasures we'd all covet:

• The Maltese Falcon from the 1941 movie. It was stolen earlier this year from a San Francisco restaurant where it was on display.
• John Travolta's white disco suit from Saturday Night Fever (in a private collection)
• The I Dream of Jeannie genie bottle (owned by Barbara Eden)
• The Murder She Wrote typewriter (owned by Angela Lansbury)

The Hard Rock Cafes are famous for their artifacts: Elvis Gold Records, costumes worn in concert by the Beatles, instruments played by Black Sabbath and other groups. From the Hard Rock Cafe's website comes this story of how the memorabilia collection started:

"Legend has it that shortly after the London cafe opened, it became a favorite haven of Eric Clapton's, so he asked the staff if he could hang his burgundy Fender Lead II guitar on the wall to mark his favorite barstool as ‘his spot.' The cafe proudly hung the guitar, and one week later, a package arrived with a guitar from Pete Townshend of The Who with a note stating, "Mine's as good as his! Love, Pete." Interestingly since Eric Clapton spontaneously donated his guitar as the first memorabilia piece, it's not autographed. "

How about a radio museum? Thank you for asking. One is about to be built, at a $35 million cost, in Thousand Oaks, California--just north of Los Angeles.

Unfortunately a huge part of their collection--scripts, antique microphones, master recordings of shows like Gunsmoke, and WWII news broadcasts, even a live recording of the cockpit conversation of the only flight of Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose--were contaminated with PCBs during a 2004 electrical fire. Another collection--this one of antique magicans' equipment owne by the Society of American Magicians--also got doused with the toxic PCBs. The cleanup would be quite expensive (over a million dollars), and the artifacts are owned by non-profit groups. They don't have that kind of money!

Many other places collect and display movie memorabilia. The one with the greatest location is probably the Hollywood Heritage Museum. It sits directly across the street from the art-deco entrance to the famed Hollywood Bowl, a huge open-air amphitheatre. The Museum is housed in a building that was rented by Cecil B. De Mille in 1913, and used as a studio--Hollywood's first major studio, in fact. De Mille and Jesse Lasky's first feature, The Straw Man, was filmed there that year.

The Museum is only open on weekends, but in it you can see De Mille's private office, equipment and costumes and swords for silent epics like The Ten Commandments, and other neat stuff. (Sadly, a fire in 1996 destroyed some props--like the chariot from the 1926 version of Ben-Hur.)