Hollywood’s New Gold Rush : International Collectors Paying Top Prices for Film Industry Cast-Offs

There were three reasons why Beverly Hills dentist and movie memorabilia collector Gary Milan sold one of his two pianos from the movie “Casablanca” last week.

“I felt selfish. Nobody should have both pianos from ‘Casablanca,’ ” he explained.

“Then, obviously, money was somewhat involved. I was curious to see what its value was. But, also, I have relatives who have never believed that movie memorabilia was worth any money or had any value to begin with. I was hoping to prove them wrong.”

Did he ever.

On Friday, an unidentified Japanese film buff outbid real estate tycoon Donald Trump at Sotheby’s with a $154,000 offer for Milan’s green upright piano--on which Sam played “As Time Goes By” to Rick and Ilsa in a Parisian cafe during a flashback scene in the 1942-1943 Warner Bros. classic.

Suddenly the dentist found himself riding a new international wave of acquisitive passion for the cast-offs of decades of Hollywood history. As prices rise for movie memorabilia and more emerges from storerooms and attics, Milan and other collectors are reaping unexpected financial windfalls. At the same time, however, concerns are mounting that the new run on Hollywood bric-a-brac hidden around Los Angeles and the rest of the country could end up on foreign soil.

“I just think these movies have a worldwide appeal, and this is evident in the international types of buyers we had,” said Sotheby’s collectibles expert Dana Hawkes, noting that Friday was the first time that a Japanese person has bid on a major Hollywood prop. “Movie memorabilia has gained in popularity in the last three years. But, before, it’s always been the Americans who wanted it.”

Also at last week’s auction, an Australian collector scooped up the witches’ hat from “The Wizard of Oz” for a whopping $33,000. In June, a pair of Dorothy’s Ruby slippers sold for $165,000. And last month, an unidentified Canadian buyer set a record for animated artwork by paying $135,000 for a black-and-white celluloid and watercolor background from Walt Disney’s 1934 cartoon “The Orphan’s Benefit.”

Now two London costuming houses are reportedly trying to get hold of a staggering

1 million-piece collection of period costumes being sold by Paramount Studios for an asking price of $3 million. And Eric Vance, an American representative for Japan’s giant C. Itoh & Co. trading firm, announced on Friday that “we expect to be back to purchase more articles,” since the Japanese now see movie memorabilia as both a “hedge against inflation” and part of a newly fashionable trend currently under way in their country of “collecting American culture.”

Milan felt some regret when he learned that a Japanese had bought the “Casablanca” piano.

“That doesn’t make me real happy,” the dentist rued. “While I’m pleased with the price for the piano, I’m a little unpleased that it’s probably leaving the country.”

Maybe so. But the sudden entrance of the Japanese into the movie memorabilia market--at a time when they’re buying up artwork by Van Gogh and other masterpieces at record prices--is a signal to the collecting world that the value of Hollywood-related

items, which already went up substantially in 1988, could really soar in 1989.

How high will prices go? Nobody knows.

One thing is certain: The higher that prices go, the more movie memorabilia will come onto the market. And that spells good news not just for collectors but also for the artifacts themselves--props, celluloids and even costumes--which too often were lost, abused or even destroyed over the years because they were thought to have little monetary value.

“More publicity generates more interest and then more material comes out into the open,” noted Sotheby’s Hawkes. “Each feeds into the other.”

Currently, record prices are being set left and right. At Sotheby’s last Wednesday, an unidentified buyer paid $143,000 for an annotated type-script of Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds,” which was broadcast over CBS Radio on Halloween night in 1938. The price was more than four times Sotheby’s expectations and is believed to be a record at auction for a radio script. Meanwhile, another buyer on Friday paid $77,000--almost 20 times the expected price--for Clark Gable’s leather-bound personal script from “Gone With the Wind,” even though it was not even autographed or annotated by the actor.

But Nashville arranger-composer Hank Levine and his wife never considered putting their witch’s hat up for sale until an anonymous American collector in June bought a pair of Dorothy’s ruby slippers from “The Wizard of Oz” at a Christie’s East auction for $165,000, making it one of the highest sums ever paid for Hollywood movie memorabilia.

“We saw the news article on TV about the red shoes and, well, we had the hat for almost 20 years and we figured it was time to let it go,” Levine recalled. “Plus, my wife had some things she would like to do with the funds.”

So, even though the hat they purchased at the 1970 MGM auction for $450 had given them enormous pleasure (they would take it out of its display case in the living room and set it atop the television every time “The Wizard of Oz” was shown), they put it up for auction.

And when they found out that they were $33,000 richer after its sale, Levine exulted: “Oh, we’ll have a very nice Christmas.”

By anyone’s standards, Milan also made a remarkable investment. The dentist purchased the “Casablanca” piano “quite by happenstance” for just a few thousand dollars (he doesn’t recall the exact price) in the early 1980s at a sale of more than 70 years worth of material by the old Cinema Mercantile Co., which used to supply property items to Warner Bros.

Primarily a collector of Colonial Americana, Milan said he is an “incurable romantic” when it comes to “Casablanca,” which he first saw while in college. Besides having the doors to Rick’s Cafe, a floor lamp, a chandelier, glassware from Rick’s bar and Ilsa Lund’s passport, he owns the other almost identical pint-sized piano (small ones were used to accommodate Bogart’s short stature) from inside Rick’s Cafe.

“Movie memorabilia is now being perceived as an art form, so things from those movies which were considered more artistic are more in demand. But the romance of a piece seems to be the motivating factor,” Milan said. “There can be certain things and props from movies that don’t have the popularity but the romance of any given item can stand alone.”

Another sign of the new obsession with movie memorabilia is the sudden surge in prices paid for celluloids, backgrounds, drawings and preliminary sketches from animated films.

Collector Levine, for example, remembers that back in the ‘70s he walked into the old Pickwick’s bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard and found at least 1,000 cels from the Walt Disney classic “Fantasia” dumped on a long table near the front door “and marked $1 each.”

By contrast, at a Christie’s auction last month, a sale of 270 lots of cels and related paraphernalia sold for more than $1 million, breaking all records for animation artwork. The highest price was for cels from “The Orphan’s Benefit” because the 1934 black-and-white cartoon has been out of theatrical distribution since Disney released the Technicolor remake in 1941.

Also increasing in value are Hollywood costumes, many of which have been lost or damaged over the years.

One of the problems with collecting Hollywood costumes, however, is their fragility. “Unless they’re properly conserved, they will disappear in a short period of time,” said Milan, who owns clothing items from “Casablanca” as well as one of Bogart’s suits from “The Maltese Falcon” and a Gable jacket from “Gone With the Wind.” Until recently, almost no one realized the value of Hollywood costumes, least of all studio heads. One famous legend has it that during a fire at a major studio in the 1930s, people took armloads of costumes and threw them into the flames to solve their storage problems. And 200 pieces of Hollywood costumes, including 27 pairs of Fred Astaire’s shoes, were stored in the old Lincoln Heights Jail of 20 years, where they were damaged by rain and dirt.

Recently, however, the value of costumes is being newly recognized. Last month, Paramount Studios bought the largest costume house in the world--Western Costume Co.--from joint owners Columbia, Universal, Fox and Warner Bros. and announced that it was putting up for sale Western’s collection of period costumes for at least $3 million.

Many costumes are still lying in storage rooms waiting to be unearthed by collectors. One of Vanessa Redgrave’s cloaks from “Camelot” 20 years ago was recently found lying in pieces and all but forgotten. Others have found their way into costume rental shops. Until just recently, anyone could have worn Elizabeth Taylor’s “Cleopatra” costumes for Halloween.

Meanwhile, private collectors are seeing to it that costume abuse is reversed. The buyer of a silver lace gown that Norma Shearer wore in “Marie Antoinette” (1938) and that was later spray-painted black for a TV commercial painstakingly removed the paint with a toothbrush.

Still, some experts believe that the best pieces of movie memorabilia belong not so much in the hands of private collectors as in a Hollywood museum--and that this would help stem what may be soon be an epidemic of foreign buyers who spirit the artifacts out of country.

Although Europe and New York have movie memorabilia museums, Los Angeles has little to speak of. The 5-year-old Hollywood Studio Museum, near the Hollywood Bowl, does have some movie memorabilia, but the facility is considered too small to mount major displays.

Efforts to establish a museum in Hollywood, including those by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, have fallen through over the years. And Debbie Reynolds echoed the feelings of many in Hollywood’s Establishment when she recently vowed to push for a full-fledged Hollywood museum “until the day I drop dead.”

Now, however, a $60-million, two-phase, 150,000-square-foot Hollywood museum looks to become a reality in three years on land surrounding Mann’s Chinese Theater, although there are continuing questions over its fund-raising prospects. The museum could become a major repository of movie memorabilia.

Then, perhaps, Milan, like other collectors, could be reassured that in the future he could keep his “Casablanca” archives “in totality.”

“I’d like nothing better,” he said, “than for that to happen one day.”