Treasure Chest of Props : Little Shop of Wonders Is Popular With Hollywood
Two boys press their faces against a storefront window, mesmerized by a thread of violet lightning that crackles before them.
Inside, store owner Parke Meek throws a wide-eyed glance at the boys as he cranks up the voltage on an antiquated device. An eight-foot, silver-white bolt packed with half a million volts thunders across the room.
Stepping over to the now-roaring coil that’s emitting the charge, Meek casually places a metal rod on it. The lightning coalesces around Meek’s hand as his body jerks in about eight directions in apparent electrocution.
The boys are a full block down Santa Monica’s Main Street by the time Meek has stifled his laughter.
“I really don’t like kids,” he said, turning off the harmless induction coil invented by Nikola Tesla in 1891. “Except for my grandchildren.”
It’s an odd comment for the 70-year-old collector who spends his days exactly as he did as a 7-year-old--hunting down “great finds.” The treasures have changed through the years--from scraps of a faded Victorian-era items he found as a boy, to antique clothing, furniture and now the archaic medical, scientific and business equipment he stocks today.
“I collect such weird stuff, no one else wants it,” Meek said. “There’s one antique dealer who always tells me, ‘Well, I haven’t anything useless, heavy and expensive for you today.’ He’s got me pegged.”
Not everyone gains entrance to Meek’s eccentric shop, Jadis Moderne, which, roughly translated from French, means “old time modern.” A “Rental Props Only” sign hangs above the door, where Meek’s collection of towering insulators stand guard.
Since 1990, when Meek switched from making furniture to renting odd props, Hollywood’s set decorators have beaten a path to his door. Many of them spy his collection, which is not advertised, on their way to Chinois on Main, Wolfgang Puck’s noted restaurant three doors away. Meek said he isn’t all that impressed with Hollywood or its movies, just the “incredible amount of cash” it lays down for props.
“Movie companies waste a lot of money on stuff they never use,” said Meek, a widower who lives in Brentwood. “I sold a mock-up of a laboratory for this thing they have in France (Euro-Disney), and rented some turn-of-the-century typewriters and cameras for that musical, ‘Newsies.’ I do a lot of TV shows.”
Browsing Jadis’ stock is like roaming through the Addams Family living room. Cases of antique combs, spectacles and a cache of radios and 1920s typewriters rescued from a Salvation Army dumpster line the walls. A one-pound box of gunpowder lies on a counter--”in case I want to blow anything up,” Meek deadpanned.
There are enough Tesla coils and plasmospheres (glass spheres that zap ionized gases into lightning-like forms) to stock an Isaac Asimov novel.
Meek began his career in 1951 as an apprentice to furniture designer Charles Eames, and opened Jadis Moderne as a furniture shop in 1976, a few years before Eames’ death. He also ran a West Hollywood antique clothing store called “Ephemera” in the early 1960s. It was boredom that prompted the switch from furniture to his current inventory.
“I didn’t want to make the damn stuff anymore,” said Meek, lighting up a cigarette in a back room packed with about 1,500 books he uses to verify historical information on props and sets. “Eames said that would happen one day--it took about 10 years.”
Now, Meek said, he’s having fun, mostly with the shop’s irreverent window displays that have become conversation-starters on Main Street.
The current display features a mannequin in a white lab coat and goggles who fidgets with bizarre medical apparatuses. The scene is lighted by a 1920s overhead operating room lamp sporting a dozen tentacles. Each December, Meek straps Santa down with electrodes, his brain floating in formaldehyde nearby. A sign reads: “Don’t Worry. We are charging him up for the ‘Big Ride.’ ”
“He’s always been sort of a rebel,” said Larry Albright, Meek’s friend since the ‘60s who also operates a prop shop nearby. “When everyone goes commercial during the holidays, Parke heads in the opposite direction.
“He has a phenomenal eye for unusual items. Some things have a special magic about them. He knows how to ferret them out.”
It was a boyhood friend, Sammy Levine, who sparked Meek’s passion for scrounging. Levine worked a pushcart around the streets of Ft. Wayne, Ind., for his father, a junk dealer. Meek tagged along, collecting his own treasures, which he stashed in the basement and attic of his parents’ home. After returning from a stint in the Marines during World War II, he had enough antiques to open his own shop in Indiana.
Meek’s day often begins with bidding wars at Salvation Army auctions, or an exploratory tour through a defunct factory.
“Yesterday I roamed through downtown, looking through an old refrigeration plant,” said Meek, nearly tripping over a high-tension-line transformer, spread across the shop’s back yard like a felled dinosaur.
“I wanted to cart off this giant 12-foot operator’s wheel--the kind that Igor cranks in horror films. I’ve started my own collection. I find the best stuff in alleys. Swap meets are good and so are the dock areas around San Pedro.”
When a water main recently burst on Main Street in front of his shop, Meek spent much of the day watching a work crew fix it. It’s his curiosity, he said, that won’t let him go--a trait that he finds in lamentably short supply these days.
“See this issue of Science and Invention? he said, holding up a 1924 magazine emblazoned with a Stellar X-press rocket ship streaking across the universe. “Compare that with this 1992 issue of Popular Science. Look at this cover article: ‘Ten Ways to Efficiently Insulate Your Home.’ I’m canceling my subscription! Whatever happened to people’s imagination?”
