From ‘Action!’ to auction

By Janet Eastman

February 25, 2003 

A guillotine is on the auction block. So are Cleopatra, Dirty Gerty’s Saloon and a spaceship used in the movie “Men in Black.”

Theme Warehouse, a prop company in Downey, is having a liquidation sale, and 2,000 oddball items must go, from the tiki god seen in an episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” to glittered chandeliers that movie stars air-kissed under at Oscar parties.

The auction is luring bidders hot for props. In just two days they’ll plunk down $1 million to cart away plywood buildings, plastic animals and life-size mannequins with eerie glass eyeballs.

Who wants this stuff? Movie studios, theme parks, other prop houses and event planners. The Western-themed Whiskey Pete’s casino at the California-Nevada border buys, of all things, pagodas and rickshaws for its ballroom.

Private collectors – and the auctioneers and memorabilia stores that cater to them – are also eager for a piece of Hollywood magic. The market has flourished in the last decade because of the ease of selling and buying anything online, from vials of water from the “Melrose Place” apartment complex pool to rubber lobsters from the movie “The Perfect Storm.” Studios such as New Line Cinema and 20th Century Fox have Web sites to compete with EBay and Amazon.com’s entertainment offerings.

And some bidders are just having fun. An advertising executive attending the close-out sale in Downey buys a carved totem pole and a tribal chief who looks as if he’s been smuggled out of the Jungle Cruise ride. He passes, though, on the luau pig roaster that will go for $700.

An oddity of this auction, which was held last week: Most things are sold separately, to maximize the bottom line. That is, a cowboy in leather chaps (lot No. 40) is pulled out of his vintage saddle (lot No. 41) and off his gray horse (lot No. 39) and sold to someone who may or may not reunite them.

Posters warn bidders that everything is “as is,” “with faults” and all sales are final.

But even though there’s no chance to return an explosives crate for a refund or, say, trade it later for an open-mouthed alligator, offers are ricocheting around the room.

Furry gargoyles, waxy mobsters and other items that can’t be explained in words are going, going, going, sometimes for several thousand dollars. A 7-foot-tall gray elephant brings in $4,000.

Auctioneer Roy Gamityan, who for 14 years has sold everything from Arthur Andersen’s office furniture to erstwhile online grocery vans, admits to being a bit rattled by the strange stuff on the block. “That oversized baby in the high chair,” he says, “is what you might call ‘unsettling.’ ”

Touring the warehouse, which is the size of a Pavilion’s, is like stepping into a nightmare induced by a midnight pigout of old mussels and cheap champagne.

Dangling overhead are massive Mardi Gras masks with sinister smiles (from the movie “Bubble Boy”) and papier-mache hands the length of King Kong’s tongue. On the floor, frozen in slither position, is a snorkeler with falling pink Speedos and one arm stroking the air. He’s joined by other post-rigor mortis beachgoers, from a veiny-legged tourist to a shark-headed muscle man.

The costumed mannequins – and there are hundreds of them – have Chucky-like leers. Even the Cowardly Lion, with its sad matted fur, looks scary up close. Where is Vincent Price? Hiding inside the mummy case?

The warehouse is organized into sections: Medieval, Safari, Tombstones. At the entrance are the clowns – one 15-footer on stilts, another with a Dolly Parton bosom. Their creepy painted faces make the Horror section next to them, with a man dangling from a noose in a tower, look like the world of Dr. Seuss.

Dead ends stop visitors in their tracks in front of clusters of props depicting a casino or a coffin factory. The World Landmarks section recalls the classic anxiety dream in which the dreamer runs in slow motion from place to place, unable to find whatever is missing. A cartoony Leaning Tower of Pisa tilts toward a tin Eiffel Tower. And the scaled-down Big Ben is barely taller than the Buckingham Palace guards, who with their steely stares look just like, well, Buckingham Palace guards.

Almost a third of the props were made by the Hollywood-based Roschu Prop House in the 1950s. Merv Griffin bought the collection in 1996 for his special events company, which put on awards-show parties. He sold it to Lisa Tucker, the owner of Theme Warehouse, five years ago, but now she wants out of the business. She says costs are going up while clients’ budgets are down.

“Conventions and sales-incentive parties were my bread and butter, but it’s a depressed time and it’s just not fun anymore,” says Tucker.

Besides, she’s found “a wonderful, lively man who wants to take care of me, so I don’t have to work anymore with mannequins.”