I thought I’d share some photos with you that I took this past weekend at the Hollywood Heritage Museum. It’s located opposite the Hollywood Bowl and is housed in the same barn that Cecil B. DeMille rented when he and his Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company arrived in Hollywood in 1913 to film The Squaw Man.
They currently (this particular exhibit closes this weekend) have a marvelous exhibit called Meet The Stars: 100 Years of MGM Studios and the Golden Age of Hollywood. It’s filled with an impressive array of artifacts from Hollywood’s golden era. It closes next week, so for those of you who can’t make it, here are some of my favorite photos.
The museum has a miniature model of how Paramount Pictures looked in its early days.
This life-sized portrait of Jean Harlow was painted after her death.
And this was Jean’s rather fabulous Art Deco cigarette holder. (Here is some more info.)
(UPDATE: Here is some more info about the Art Deco cigarette holder.)
When you’re Mae West, of course you have a telephone with a picture of yourself in the middle of the rotary dial:
On October 13, 1939, MGM released Babes in Arms starring Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. It became the 4th biggest hit of the year (it made even more money than The Wizard of Oz did in both films’ first release.) The pin tells you the theater it was playing at and the address. The Boyd was a theater in Philadelphia at 1908 Chestnut St. It was open from 1929 and 2002. Those pins could be made up for each theater showing the movie. It was something that the theater could order from the MGM PR department campaign book. They would make them up for those theaters that ordered them. That pin was used for the Mickey and Judy fan club too.
A pack of playing cards promotional tie-in for The Wizard of Oz. It’s a card game that was released in 1940 in the UK. It has the entire movie in pictures on each card.
On April 29, 1932, when the stars arrived at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre for the premiere of MGM’s all-star Grand Hotel, they were asked to sign in as though they were checking into an actual hotel.
Oliver Hardy had his own wallet for his business cards:
This compact was once owned by MGM’s queen of the lot, Norma Shearer:
I have to wonder who might have put out the cigarettes into this MGM ashtray:
I’m not sure what this was, so let’s call it a paperweight:
When MGM’s super-producer, Irving Thalberg died on September 14, 1936, he was only 37 years old. But he was held in such high regard that The Hollywood Reporter devoted its entire cover to a fitting tribute. (I wrote a novel about Irving Thalberg called The Heart of the Lion.)
Yes, even the Creature from the Black Lagoon was there:
Cary Grant wore this tuxedo in 1958’s Indiscreet:
Carole Lombard had this coin locket monogrammed with her initials. It was hanging next to a bottle stopper fashioned to look like her husband, Clark Gable:
Outside the museum (aka the Hollywood Barn) is this commemorative plaque about the building’s history. Its current location is its 5th!
~oOo~
Marvelous exhibit and your photos are excellent!
I have never been there. Is it closing for good? It seems like it has been there as long as I can remember.
The exhibit is closing, not the museum. They have a new exhibit going in later this month.
thanks Martin, I should read more carefully. looks like a cool exhibit to have seen. I grew up in Burbank and my grandparents lived on Hollywood. We would go by this place on the way to visit them. There are so many places I never went to growing up in Los Angeles area. I need to make an effort to go down a see these places before there gone or before I’m gone.