FAVORITE MOVIE PROPS: A DREAM WISH LIST

It’s been my experience that it’s the rare film enthusiast who doesn’t also possess a passing interest in (if not an outright mania for) those fascinating objects of tangible trivia associated with the making of motion pictures. I’m speaking, of course, about movie memorabilia.

And whether in the form of collecting marketing materials like posters, stills, pressbooks, and souvenir programs; attending museum exhibits displaying classic movie costumes and props; attending celebrity autograph conventions, or scouring online auction sites for items from celebrity estates or rare props and collectibles from favorite films – the motivation behind the actions is the same. It’s the desire to possess part of a dream. To rekindle and revisit the sensations inspired by a favorite film. The wish to bridge the gap between reality and the fantasy world of movies.

With only a few having access to actual movie sets, 

the collecting of movie marketing materials is the next best thing. 

I love movie giveaways to this day, but back in the day, a movie theater screening that offered a souvenir button or promotional sticker (like Pee Wee's bow tie) was high on my list

When I was a youngster, I really had a thing for movie posters and movie poster graphic design. I loved looking at the poster display cases outside movie theaters, and even had a scrapbook where I'd paste my favorite movie poster ads clipped from the entertainment section of the newspaper. In 1970, when I was 13, I purchased the original 1968 Barbarella poster for $8.50. It was my very first movie poster acquisition (I still have it, framed, in my home today) in what would grow to become a collection of movie promotional material so sizable that by 1975, I had more posters than wall space to accommodate them.

My bedroom during my senior year in high school.

My moving to Los Angeles in 1978 kick-started my autograph-collecting hobby. Essentially an industry town, working in the public sector, even in the most minor capacity, guaranteed the odd celebrity close encounter and the opportunity to get an autograph. As I worked many odd jobs while putting myself through film school (McDonald's, bookstore, Honda dealership, security guard, makeup artist, porno magazine shop), not a single job didn't have the occasional celebrity patron. My scrapbook overflowed. 

Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac popped into the McDonald's on Labrea Avenue on the evening of February 15, 1979. The night of the 21st Grammy Awards. "This is embarrassing," she said as she graciously signed her autograph. I remember seeing her leave and enter a big black limousine, but for the life of me, I can't remember what she ordered!

By the late '90s, with the advent of eBay and the decline in movie poster design (graphic art was replaced by Big Superimposed Heads), I wound up either selling off or donating to a local film museum the bulk of what had grown into a cumbersome movie poster and Lobby Card collection. I held onto the ones that meant the most to me: Barbarella, Rosemary’s Baby, The Day of the Locust, Bonnie & Clyde, Andy Warhol’s BAD, Myra Breckinridge, Reflections in a Golden Eye, and They Shoot Horses, Don’tThey?. The ones I regret selling?: Chinatown and Shampoo. What was I thinking? 

The collection is gone, but my fondness for movie memorabilia of all stripes has never abated. And, as one might guess, Los Angeles is a wellspring for movie memorabilia fans. Annually, the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising has an exhibit of Oscar-nominated costumes, the County Museum frequently has film-related exhibits featuring props and artifacts from classic films and filmmakers, and it's a trend now for movie theaters to have photo-op lobby displays of props, costumes, or set mockups of featured films.

The Only Pieces of Movie Memorabilia I Own 

The weirdest (and thus coolest) gift I ever received from my partner is this plaster-cast of the right side of Liza Minnelli's face from the Paramount Studios makeup department. It was used as a form to design and fit the acid burn prosthetic makeup for her role in Otto Preminger's Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970).  

This visually breathtaking piece of movie memorabilia is the aerobic-marathon-competition dance card pinned to my back when I appeared as a dance (exercise) extra in the 1985 James Bridges film Perfect. When filming was done, the costume supervisor let me keep this and the T-shirt it was pinned to... a gray tank top with the words "BODY BY JESSIE" printed on the front (Jessie Wilson being the name of Jamie Lee Curtis' aerobics instructor character). If I ever find the T-shirt, I'll add the image. I only hope I didn’t impulsively sell it on eBay and forget about it! 

It's because of my love of movie history and memorabilia that I decided to write this post after being contacted by the online auction site, Invaluable.com, and asked if I was interested in writing about what would be my dream movie prop or bit of memorabilia to find and pick up in an auction.
As I've only been to one auction in my entire life and wanted to bid on everything in sight (in 1984 Francis Ford Coppola's failed American Zoetrope Studios auctioned off tons of items from its films. I had my eye on all the miniature Las Vegas props from One From the Heart), I jumped at the opportunity to mount my own dream auction of movie props I would die for.


KEN'S TOP-TEN MOVIE MEMORABILIA AUCTION WISH LIST (money is no object):

1. The tannis root charm and chain from Rosemary's Baby (1968)

2. Any one of the futuristic, blatantly phallic weapons from Barbarella (1968).

3. The giant, inflatable easy chairs from Ken Russell's The Boy Friend (1971)

4. The miniature replica of the Hollywood Bowl Muse Fountain from Xanadu (1980) 

5. One of those belts worn by Judas and the angels in the musical Jesus Christ Superstar (1973). Although difficult to make out, each belt has a rhinestone buckle in the shape of the "praying angels" logo. While I'm at it, Judas' white, fringed jumpsuit wouldn't be bad, either!

6. Those Op-Art sunglasses worn by Debbie Watson in The Cool Ones (1967)

7. One of those prop books with Faye Dunaway on the cover used in Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)

8. One of those adorable bulbous Munchkinland taxicabs from The Wiz (1978)*

9. Eve Harrington's Sarah Siddons Award from All About Eve (1950)

10. Elton John's space-age Pinball Wizard machine from Ken Russell's Tommy (1975)

The above list encompasses everything from small props to items so huge they count as art direction or automotive. But a wish list is a wish list.

I'd be curious to find out whether any of you out there harbor any unrequited movie-prop or memorabilia desires from any of your favorite movies.

As stated, the idea for this post sprang from the marketing minds at Invaluable.com, which seems to be doing some research into the kinds of items film enthusiasts might find desirable. And if this post seems like the internet version of an infomercial, it's a one-sided one. I'm getting nothing out of promoting the site for free (which does have some pretty cool stuff. I'm no Star Wars fan, but a while back they auctioned off a prop gun used by Harrison Ford in the film -save perhaps their allowing me to steal their post idea.

If you're interested in seeing which movie items are currently up for auction, you can visit the movie memorabilia section of the site HERE.

On a closing note, here are two of the miniatures from One From the Heart  I had the opportunity to see in person back in 1984 at the American Zoetrope auction. I have no idea what they ultimately sold for, but they were featured in the film's title sequence. They couldn't have been more than 5 or 8 inches high.

*Update

Looks like one of those taxi cabs from The Wiz popped up in Atlantic Beach, NY. Story Here

MOVIE MEMORABILIA AUCTION ITEMS WISH LIST (Reader submissions):

The beaded wedding veil worn by Guenevere in the film Excalibur (1981)
(submitted by Joel)

Doris Day's mermaid outfit from The Glass Bottom Boat (1966)
(submitted by David Kucharski) Image: thewackytacky.blogspot.com 

An original Baby Jane Doll from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1961)
(submitted by Rick)

One of the Gothic ankh pendants/daggers from The Hunger (1983)
(submitted by Darin)

One of these futuristic team jerseys from Rollerball (1975)
(submitted by Mark V)

This ghost viewer was given out to patrons of William Castle's 13 Ghosts in 1960.
Pictured item is an original once up for auction at theauctionfloor.com
(submitted by MDG 14450)

Not a movie prop, but this 1957 Jayne Mansfield water bottle would keep many a collector warm
(submitted by Chris)

This Everlasting Gobstopper from the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory was sold at auction by actress Julie Dawn Cole (Veruca Salt) in 2012 for the tidy sum of $40,000.
(submitted by John)

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2015

WILLY WONKA & THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY 1971

Do kids really like watching other kids in movies and on TV? I certainly know I didn't. At least not what passed for kids in the TV shows and movies of my youth. My inability to relate to that hyperactive genus of freckle-faced precocity known as the child actor contributed to my childhood aversion to Disney, so-called "family entertainment," and basically any film or TV program which trained its spotlight on adorable, towheaded moppets. Hence, I was nearly in my 30s before I got around to seeing Mary Poppins, Pollyanna, The Sound of Music, or The Parent Trap; all movies I've come to adore as an adult (ultimately the demographic most invested in the sentimentalized idealization of that trauma-filled age-span known as childhood), but which held little interest for me as a kid because I simply saw no connection between myself and those miniature adult-impersonators I saw onscreen. 

Take, for example, the TV sitcoms I grew up watching: Even as a child, Beaver Cleaver of Leave it to Beaver came across to me as a pathological liar with virtually no common sense and a wobbly moral compass that could be effectively redirected by the feeble taunt of "Chicken!" Those ginger twins, Buffy & Jody of Family Affair, were like these too-good-to-be-true, animatronic wind-up dolls; Dennis the Menace was a well-intentioned but nevertheless misogynist, passive-aggressive sociopath; and don't even get me started on that mayonnaise-on-white-bread-with-Velveeta-slices Brady Bunch clan.

Either absurdly goody-goody or possessed of an annoyingly thickheaded inability to ascribe consequence to action, these characters may have warmed the hearts of nostalgia-prone adults clinging to a revisionist reverie of childhood. A time of mischievous scamps getting into adorable "scrapes" and wide-eyed cherubs spreading sunshine and rainbows wherever they went. But for all their resemblance to the pint-sized Gila monsters I went to school with in real life, these sitcom kiddies might as well have been creatures from The Twilight Zone.

Of course, there were a few rare exceptions. Given my own dark disposition, I had no problem with the refreshingly odd Pugsly and Wednesday Addams on The Addams Family. And I took considerable pleasure in Jane Withers as the hilariously bratty antithesis to the sugary Shirley Temple in 1934's Bright Eyes ("My psychoanalyst told me there ain't any Santa Clause or fairies or giants or anything like that!"). On the other hand, I was most impressed by Patty McCormack's Rhoda Penmark in The Bad Seed, who was basically James Cagney in a pinafore. And, of course, one of my all-time favorites was the 1968 musical Oliver! with its ragtag cast of underage pickpockets, thieves, and swindlers.

If anything is to be gleaned from this, it's that, as a child, I longed for an alternative to these antiseptic images of childhood just as my parents yearned for something beyond the Father Knows Best/The Donna Reed Show model of family. Sure, kids can be sugar and spice and all that, but kids are also self-centered, very sharp, and crueler than most adults would like to admit. And childhood, while certainly a (perceived) joyous and carefree time when viewed from the perspective of adult responsibility and stress, is nonetheless a very scary period of life, fraught with anxieties and insecurities.

Redeemed by resilience, curiosity, and a limitless capacity for hope and dreams, I've long held that children, in essence, aren't really that different from adults. And if authentically rendered, they're infinitely more interesting than the fantasy concept of children fed to us in most entertainments intended for the young set. Author Roald Dahl understood this, and that is why the ofttimes frightening, marvelously witty and acerbic Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (adapted from his 1964 book, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory) stands out as one of the few children's movies from my childhood I recall with a great deal of fondness. Finally, here was a terribly sweet children's movie that didn't need the artificial sugar-coating.

Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka

Peter Ostrum as Charlie Bucket

Jack Albertson as Grandpa Joe

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is a straightforward fairy tale - complete with a moral and a happy ending - that takes place in a world where the fantastic and magical exist side by side with the prosaic and practical; in other words, the world as kids see it until we adults start to stick our noses in.

One day Willy Wonka, an eccentric, reclusive candy manufacturer around whose identity swarms mysterious, Gatsby-like legends, decides to open the doors of his wondrous candy factory to five lucky winners of  Golden Tickets he's hidden in Wonka Bars shipped all over the globe. The winners and one guest receive a tour of his factory and a lifetime supply of chocolate. The winners:

Germany
The gluttonous Augustus Gloop (Michael Bollner) and his mother
 (Ursula Reit, who always reminds me of an off-diet Elke Sommer)

England
Spoiled Veruca Salt (Julie Dawn Cole) and her salted peanut
magnate father, Henry (the wonderful Roy Kinnear)

America
Ill-mannered Violet Beauregarde (Denise Nickerson) and her
pushy, used-car salesman dad, Sam (Leonard Stone)

America
Rambunctious TV addict Mike Teevee (Paris Themmen) 
and his schoolteacher mom (Nora Denney)

...and most deserving, poor-as-a-church-mouse Charlie Bucket, who takes his beloved
 Grandpa Joe with him (and not his hardworking mom, but more about that later)

The four initial winners of the Golden Ticket are all comfortably well-off children (save for Veruca, who's loaded) whose want for the prize stems mainly from a kind of entitled greed indigenous to comfortably well-off children. Only poverty-stricken Charlie (who has to attend school AND help his mother support four bedridden grandparents by delivering newspapers) harbors a dream of winning the ticket to improve his family's lot. Thus, with sweet-natured Charlie tagged as the parable's obvious hero; rival candy manufacturer Arthur Slugworth (Gunter Meisner) assigned the role of villain; and the four "naughty, nasty little children" standing as emissaries of the film's moral (our behavior and our hearts are the architects of our fate), only their unpredictable and mischievous host, Mr. Willy Wonka remains, as the fairy tale's element of surprise (and chaos).

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I love the setup and structure of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The film's first half is rooted in reality...well, a charming kind of storybook reality. After all, we're asked to accept that Charlie's four grandparents have not set foot out of the bed they all share for twenty years. The second half of the film is a pure flight of fantasy wherein a common childhood dream comes to life: a visit to a magical Candyland that's part Disneyland, part amusement park funhouse, and part house of horrors (adults tend to forget how much kids enjoy being frightened and gleefully grossed-out).
From the start, the film does a great job of piquing interest in Wonka by having him discussed, Citizen Kane fashion, at length before he even makes an appearance. It also gives us a likable and sympathetic hero to root for in Charlie, who's saved from being a totally pathetic character by being blessed with a loving, if oddball, family. Conflict rears its head in the form of the other four Golden Ticket winners, who may be amplified versions of archetypal bratty kids, but, with the possible exception of Veruca, are not malicious or mean-spirited, just self-centered. (Even the awful Mike Teevee precurses questions to his host with a polite, "Mr. Wonka….")

Touring the candy factory in the S.S. Wonkatania

The two halves of the film complement one another nicely. The first half is appropriately dingy and sentimental (bordering on cloying), setting the stage for the second half, which, mirroring Wonka's unpredictable spirit, explodes into a colorful, colorful, anarchic phantasmagoria that plays gleeful havoc with the genre expectations of the children's movie.

In fact, one of my favorite things about Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is that it is such a sublimely nasty twist on the traditional tolerant celebration of childhood precocity that fuels so many films intended for children. Wonka's factory‒ a place where anything is possible…an environment wherein the laws of reason, logic, or physics don't apply‒ recall those marvelously anarchic Warner Bros. cartoons. The at-odds, adversarial byplay between Wonka and the kids evoked the comic clashes between Bugs Bunny (unflappable, always one step ahead, just a little screwy) and Daffy Duck (unchecked id combined with brazen self-interest).

While panic reigns, Wonka watches Augustus Gloop's probable drowning in the chocolate river with detached, intellectual curiosity. However, Mrs. Gloop's outburst, "You terrible man!" never fails to crack me up.

PERFORMANCES

People are fond of pointing out that Roald Dahl was not very fond of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, no doubt due to the extensive rewrites his adapted screenplay was subjected to by an unbilled David Seltzer (The Omen) and the shift of the story's focus from Charlie to Wonka. This point would be persuasive save for two things: 1) Dahl's heirs stated he would have liked the 2005 Tim Burton version (a film I found to be irredeemably wretched, so, so much for taste), and 2) With rare exceptions, an author's ability to write a book doesn't mean a hill of jellybeans when it comes to understanding what makes a film work (see: Ayn Rand, Vladimir Nabokov, and Stephen King). As far as I'm concerned, to place the focus on anyone but Wonka would have been sheer folly, especially if you're lucky enough to land an actor as inspired as Gene Wilder to take on the role. 

As personified by Wilder, Willy Wonka lives up to the alliterative suggestion of his name by being quite wonky indeed. Dressed in anachronistic high style, he sports a madman's mane of wiry locks yet keeps his wits about him at all times; he is enthusiastic and excitable as a child, yet remains unflappable and unflustered at even the most life-threatening (to the children, anyway) occurrences; and has bright, inquisitive eyes that can be warm and paternal one moment, wild and certifiably insane the next. A genial host, he's witty, sharp, sarcastic, and not particularly child-friendly. He seems singularly disinterested in being the surrogate parent and disciplinarian for the transgressions of his misbehaving guests.

"What is this, a freak-out?"
The brilliance of Wilder's portrayal is that we expect the mystery surrounding Wonka to be cleared up when we meet him, but instead, it only increases. I don't care how many times or in how many ways Warner Bros tries to wring income out of Dahl's book; Gene Wilder is the one and only Willy Wonka

Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein (both 1974) would expose Wilder's comic genius to a broader audience, but even at this relatively early juncture in his career, his performance is nothing short of Oscar-worthy. Creating an unforgettable, one-of-a-kind character (his Wonka is loveable and scary, frequently simultaneously), Wilder is the main reason the film works at all and the primary factor in why it has endured for so long after its initial flop release. Thanks to Gene Wilder's ingenious brand of insanity, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory has become a genuine children's classic. (Although Wilder was nominated for a Golden Globe, the film received only one Oscar nomination: Best Original Score.)

Any fan of The Bad Seed should find Julie Dawn Cole's vitriolic Veruca Salt a sheer delight

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

By the way, did I mention Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is a musical? No, I didn't, but that's because I was saving it for this section. At a time when movie musicals were becoming as bloated as Violet Beauregarde at maximum blueberry transformation, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory successfully bucked the trend toward entertainment elephantiasis (as much as a film deemed to be a boxoffice flop upon release can be called a success). They came up with an appealing, bite-size musical that, for once, didn't overwhelm its story and characters.
The songwriting team of Anthony Newly and Leslie Bricusse (Goodbye Mr. Chips, Scrooge!) reined in their usual tendency toward over-sophisticated melodies (although Cheer Up, Charlie, a real snoozer and always my cue to visit the snack bar, somehow made the cut) and came up with a score of tuneful, engaging songs possessing the simple, sing-song lilt of nursery rhymes and grade school. Best of all, each is staged in a clever, intimate scale that avoids bringing the proceedings to a halt and instead draws you deeper into the characters and storyline.

Director Mel Stuart wisely rejected the suggestion to expand the rousing "I've Got a Golden Ticket" into a large-scale production number that spilled out into the streets, a la 1968s Oliver!

Those around in 1971 can attest to the unavoidability of Sammy Davis Jr.'s grooved-up version of "The Candy Man" played 'round the clock on the radio at the time. And though it reached No.1 on the charts and became one of Davis' signature songs, its popularity, and omnipresence failed to garner the song an Oscar nomination (for that matter, neither did the splendid "Pure Imagination") or boost public interest in the poorly-promoted film. (Willy Wonka's visually unappealing initial-release poster and non-existent marketing campaign clearly reveal that Paramount didn't have a clue how to sell it).

"The Candy Man" is sung by Aubrey Woods (here shown giving an inadvertent jaw realignment to a little girl who didn't know her cues) as Bill, the candy shop proprietor. A role both Anthony Newley and Sammy Davis, Jr. had angled for. Once again, can we give it up for the wise decisions of Mel Stuart?

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I saw Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in 1971 when it was released, largely at my older sister's prodding. Then being unfamiliar with either Roald Dahl or the book (which I've since read, and, as much as I love it, I find the film to be a vast improvement), the title Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory sounded far too much like Toby Tyler: or Ten Weeks with a Circus, a cornball 1960 film serialized on The Wonderful World of Disney that exemplified a great many of the things I hated about children's movies. I was 13-years-old at the time, realism was all the rage, and the movies I most wanted to see in 1971 were Klute, Carnal Knowledge, Straw Dogs, The Devils, and Play Misty for Me; certainly not a treacly kiddie musical set in a candy factory.

Those catchy Oompa-Loompa songs are near impossible to dislodge from one's memory

Lucky for me, my parents put their foot down; it was either Willy Wonka or stay home. And, as this post attests, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory became one of the happiest surprises of my youth. It's a children's movie made by people who, like me, had perhaps grown tired of the conventions of the genre. It's funny in a lot of sharp, adult-centric ways (the Wonka-mania vignettes are real gems), its dialogue is witty, and its characterizations frequently laugh-out-loud hilarious. And while the story has a great deal of sweetness and sentimentality, it never feels forced or phony. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory never ever made me cry when I was a kid. But now, as an adult, each and every time I watch it, I get an attack of waterworks when Wonka, Charlie, and Grandpa Joe are flying over the city in the Wonkavator.

Nowadays, when children indulging in bad behavior are rewarded with reality-TV contracts or celebrated by YouTube hits, I guess a movie like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory really pushes a few nostalgia buttons of my own. In today's culture-of-cruelty climate, where reality shows teach us that the-end-justifies-the-means if that end is fame or fortune, I can grow pretty sentimental about a story where a child is actually rewarded for doing the right thing.

Wonka: But Charlie... don't forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he always wanted.

Charlie: What happened?

Clip from "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory"  1971

BONUS MATERIAL
Fans of Joan Crawford's 1967 circus epic, Berserk, will recognize Bruno the clown (George Claydon) as one of Wonka's Oompa Loompas.

Fans of Lost Horizon (1973)....those with good ears, anyway...will recognize the dubbed singing voice of Charlie's mother to also be that of Liv Ullmann. The singer is Diana Lee.

In 2013 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory became a West End musical. Although the title suggests little or no connection with the film, the show's original music score includes the Newley/Bricusse composition. "Pure Imagination."

Many sites are devoted to trivia, production info, and hidden-joke theories surrounding Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. My favorite is the groundswell movement dedicated to proving that Charlie's beloved Grandpa Joe is basically a selfish, lazy slob without a conscience. Precipitated by the character-revealing remark he volunteers to Charlie being asked where he got the loaf of bread for dinner (suitable for a banquet, I'm sad to say): "What difference does it make where he got it? The point is, he got it!" Combined with his "magical" ability to get out of bed when there's something fun to do (aka, not work), a persuasive case is made against lovable Grandpa Joe throughout the web. 

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 20014