Picture-Play Magazine (Sep 1928 - Feb 1929)

60 A glimpse of the unique museum whose counterpart exists nowhere else in the world. Admission Tx^enty-fiVe Cents Hollywood now has its movie museum, where the fan may see a collection of costumes worn by stars in notable pictures, as well as rare stills, portraits and "props" identified with the history of motion pictures. THE film community is acquiring its own brand of culture. The years having brought dignity, it no longer feels bound to duplicate the manners and customs of other cities. Essentially apart from any other colony, it has come to assert its individuality boldly. Indicative of this independence is its recently opened museum. Almost every city has a museum. Hollywood, growing to maturity, admits the need of one, too. But, properly, Hollywood's museum is unique. Nowhere in the world has it a counterpart. It is, of course, a motion-picture museum. Stills, rather than Gauguins, line the walls. Sets, instead of medieval furniture, cover the floors. It is Sadie Thompson's dress, not Marie Antionette's, in that show case ; a mechanical dinosaur from "The Lost World," not a Malayan skeleton, in the corner ; that armor dates from "Robin Hood's" time, released, you remember, about five years ago. For your delectation, Hollywood traditions and Hollywood history — on view at twentyfive cents a head. Harry Crocker, well-known young aid to Chaplin, is the owner of the museum. The basic scheme was to accommodate tourist fans, the majority of whom have no entree to the studios. These visitors, thwarted in their curiosity, will find some degree of satisfaction in viewing at close range the accessories of picture production in Mr. Crocker's museum. This enterprising young man conceived the idea and executed it with the aid of indulgent producers, who looked the other way while he looted their property rooms. His friends rallying nobly, the items in the Harry Crocker, founder of the museum, stands inside "The Iron Lady," an instrument of torture used in "The Man Who Laughs." museum cost him nothing. Some are gratuitous loans, and many are gifts. Searching for a suitable location, Crocker selected a spacious one-story building, formerly an automobile showroom, across from Warner Brothers' studio on Sunset Boulevard. The rental of this and the salaries of two attendants are the only expenses. On the night the museum opened its doors, Hollywood turned out enthusiastically. The unprofessional populace, both transient and permanent was, for the moment, more interested in the stars themselves seen there, than in the glass cases containing their costumes. The occasion was gala, but it is the subsequent interest in the museum itself that augurs well for its future. The exhibits will be changed, and additions made, at regular intervals. Some detail of every notable picture will find its way to the museum. Among the present items are the first and original costume worn by Chaplin, the derby rusty with age, the suit threadbare, the cane battered, which is insured for $50,000, and would doubtless bring a big sum if offered to the British or any other national museum ; Gloria Swanson's Sadie Thompson costume and, in the same case, a Sadie Thompson doll, which Gloria herself modeled in wax for Crocker ; the bathing suits made famous by Mack Sennett, beginning with the antiquated furbelows of Swanson, Haver, and Prevost, and continuing down the line to the scant trifles of Madeline Hurlock ; the entire outfit, in all its brocade and metal embroidery, worn by Rudolph Valentino, in Continued on page 107