Hollywood (1938)

A. C. "Whitey" Wilson points with some pride to an eighty-five-year-old victoria which may be seen in Jezebel He has everything from an ash-tray to a stuffed zebra and what is more, he has a use for every one of his many belongings By WINIFRED AYDELOTTE ■ A certain door at Warner Brothers Studio is lettered "A. C. Wilson, Prop Department." Step through it and you find yourself in the setting of the world's most gigantic fairy tale, where anything you could wish for could be placed in your hand in a minute. It is presided over by The Man Who Knows Everything; the man, futhermore, who can rub Aladdin's lamp as many times as he wishes, while a hundred genii jump to do his bidding. A picture, they say, begins in the prop department. So Mr. Wilson must know the name, purpose, origin, size, shape, price and whereabouts of every possible prop a director might call for, and he can supply it at a moment's notice. He knows all there is to know about architecture, furniture, fashions, interior decoration, art, vehicles, electricity, animals, and history, and his knowledge covers all periods up to the present — and a little beyond. Once there was no such thing as a prop department in the picture business. Lamps, furniture, wagons, objects d'art . . . whatever was needed was rented or borrowed from private individuals and small renting companies. When Mr. Wilson started handling props for the picture, Main Street, a prop department came into being. He was it. He went around to all the second hand stores in Long Beach and Pasadena and bought all their old-fashioned furniture and what-nots for the "K e n n i c o t t" home. Those purchases formed the nucleus of what appears today to be the largest department store, junk shop, art store and merchandizing center in the world, larger than any metropolitan department store you ever saw. ■ The one object I can think of that is not in Wilson's department is a whale; whaling, however, is represented by every prop necessary for a whaling picture. I tried to catch him, and asked for various things .... a needle and No. 60 thread; a can of dog food; a set of false teeth; a stuffed bison's head; a corsage of orchids; a bow and arrow; an Eighteenth Century shoe buckle; a quart German beer stein (he wouldn't fill it for me although on a shelf was a can of beer in case a director called for it) ; a first aid kit; an Indian head-dress; a copy of "The Blue Boy"; a spittoon .... my imagination ran riot. Wilson rubbed his Aladdin's lamp, meaning that he yelled for George or Alec or Jim, and a minute later the object was brought to me or I to it. I even asked for a rabbit's foot. That was in what he calls the "Valuable Room," which contains every choice bit you can think of from a $5,000 violin to a glass eye. I was allowed to look at — but not touch — a $25,000 crystal chandelier. Around the corner, I was momentarily horror-stricken at coming face to face with a stuffed eel. I walked miles through all the departments: artificial flowers, weapons, drapery, electric fixtures, new and "character" furniture, lamps, wagons and carriages of all kinds, art, bric-a-brac, household utensils, rugs ... oh, just make a list of every known object in the world. There is also a department devoted to the names and addresses of all livestock needed for pictures. There is the mill department, in which are built and made all furniture and props that are not to be rented or bought. ■ One of Wilson's most valuable genii is a man named Richardson. Richardson is a shopper who would make Doris Duke Cromwell look like a peanut buyer. Every morning he leaves the studio in his truck for Los Angeles. He makes an average of twenty purchases a day. He knows value and where to find it. He knows where to find the bedroom suite for a glamour picture and the old bedstead for the homestead picture; the parrot that can say "Kay Francis," or a tire for a 1913 Maxwell. Richardson telephones Wilson every twenty minutes from wherever he happens to be to check on any possible new demands that must be filled immediately. For example, during the shooting of Jezebel, the director wanted a certain kind of watch fob worn by Southern gentlemen of New Orleans just prior to the Civil War. When Richardson telephoned, Wilson told him about it and dispatched a motorcycle boy to meet him at a certain corner in half an hour. Richardson knew where to get the fob — it's his business to know — and in half an hour he handed it to the boy on the motorcycle, who promptly turned around and roared back to Warners. In exactly one hour the director had the fob on the set. That's service! Richardson has a tough job. Remember the day you went downtown to buy that mattress? It took you all morning. Shopping is hard work. And the prop department is run on a budget as unyielding as yours. In one day, Richardson might buy a box of cigars, a bed, a tennis racket, a set of dishes, three rugs, one statue, a roulette wheel, a lamp, some vegetables, some chow mein, a school blackboard, an elephant's tusk, a pair of 1860 duelling pistols, a stew pan, a thermometer, a French grammar and some Mexican jumping beans. | Mr. Wilson receives thousands of letters, photographs and catalogues yearly from furniture companies and private individuals who have things to sell. The announcement of every new picture brings a flood of these letters and photographs. From all this mass of material he makes perhaps 75 purchases. He buys, he says, from intuition. "You can't live year in and year out with all this," waving his hand at the appallingly large and stuffed department, "without knowing its weaknesses." The letters from private persons invariably claim possession of [Continued on page 52] 36 HOLLYWOOD