Museum Waxes Happy Over ‘Stooges’ Piece

Undaunted by the international controversy that engulfed Los Angeles County’s J. Paul Getty Museum after its unveiling of an ancient Italian Aphrodite statue last month, Orange County’s most popular museum opened its new exhibit Wednesday to shouts of acclaim from patrons and accolades from local dignitaries.

Entitled “The Three Stooges,” the wax-and-fiberglass sculpture by David Robert Cellitti was valued at about $30,000 by officials of Movieland Wax Museum, who sought to head off questions of the work’s authenticity by declaring that it “was made from scratch.”

Noting that Getty officials recently announced that a prized part of their collection--a 4th Century BC head of Achilles attributed to the Greek sculptor Skopas--was actually a fake, Movieland general manager Barry Muszik said: “I admire the Getty people. At least they came forth when they discovered the truth.”

Regarding “Stooges,” however, Muszik asserted: “It was made from scratch. There’s no question of its authenticity.”

The sculpture, composed of three free-standing figures known as Larry, Curly and Moe, was described as a work of “affection” by Cellitti, who attended the unveiling at the Buena Park museum.

“I had to settle on a set of expressions and gestures that represented the Three Stooges,” said Cellitti, 37. “The challenge was to get as many Stooge elements into as small a space as possible.”

Cellitti said he hoped his sculpture would be evocative of “creating havoc in an industrial setting,” but he consciously rejected the abstract sculptural styles of the early 20th Century in favor of a more traditional, literalist approach.

The figures display conventional Stooge expressions: a frown on Moe, a look of surprise for Curly and, for Larry, “the look you get when you smell something really foul,” Cellitti said.

The work presents an archetypal Stooge activity--painting a room--complete with the paint brushes, dropcloths and other familiar household devices that the Stooges remade into implements of destruction in their films.

A stuffed deer, a cuckoo clock and a 1950s-era Mixmaster are among the absurdist symbols that appear throughout the work. Despite the months of planning that preceded the piece’s construction, some elements were the result of plain old inspiration, Cellitti said.

“Originally, Larry didn’t have his foot in the (paint) bucket. And all of a sudden it hit me: Larry should have his foot in the bucket! He needs his foot in the bucket!” Cellitti said.

Movieland has one of the world’s largest Cellitti collections, including his “Marlon Brando,” “George Burns” and “Michael Jackson.” Other Cellittis are on display at such institutions as San Francisco’s Wax Museum on Fisherman’s Wharf, the Wax Museum of the Southwest and the Shalom Palace Wax Museum in Tel Aviv.

Gary Owens, the radio and television personality who led the 1983 effort to obtain a star for the Stooges on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, attended the unveiling, where he pronounced the Cellitti sculpture “certainly the seventh or eighth wonder of the world.”

Owens said the Orange County museum received “Stooges” because “the Prado didn’t have room. The ‘Pieta’ they have there takes up the space of three statues,” he explained.

Examining the work, Owens praised “the curvilineature line formed by Moe’s finger as he reaches out to strangle Curly.” He added nostalgically that “there was no one who could grab a person by the nostrils and drag him across the room the way Moe could.”

Evaluating the splatter effect achieved by Cellitti on the walls, furniture and ceiling of the Stooge room, Owens compared the composition to the modernist works of Picasso as well as the paintings of such French impressionists as Cezanne and Monet.

“And as the Stooges so often demonstrated,” Owens said, “a fool and his Monet are soon parted.”

Museum patrons, some from as far away as Mexico City and New Jersey, reacted with delight when they came upon the sculpture, which sits in a corner among “Jimmy Cagney and Pat O’Brien,” “Brigitte Bardot” and the Cellitti “Marlon Brando.”

“That looks just like Moe!” said Sandra Phea, 28, of Carson. “Larry and Moe look perfect. Curly is almost perfect,” she said, adding that along with the “Redd Foxx” and the Cellitti “Michael Jackson,” “Stooges” was her favorite exhibit.

Students were particularly taken with the piece.

“Oh, it’s my favorite!” exclaimed Melissa Nash, 12, of Madera. “It looks just like them, except for Curly, who doesn’t really look like him,” she said. Pausing for a moment, Nash proclaimed that “Stooges” was the highlight of her visit.

“It’s just something you can’t forget,” she said. “I’ll never forget it for the rest of my life.”