Ground Broken for Hollywood Museum

With trumpets blaring “Hooray for Hollywood” and a bit of boom-and-flash special effects, city, business and entertainment leaders, along with some celebrities, proclaimed Tuesday the impending opening of the Hollywood Entertainment Museum.

The 33,000-square-foot museum will have the actual bar from “Cheers” and the set from “Star Trek” for its opening, scheduled in September.

Designed to preserve and celebrate California’s most important economic industry and revitalize Hollywood, the $5.5-million museum will emerge from the Hollywood Galaxy shopping center on Hollywood Boulevard and Sycamore Avenue, near the El Capitan Theatre and Mann Chinese Theatre and the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

At groundbreaking ceremonies, Mayor Richard Riordan, noting that the dream of Hollywood does not match the reality, asserted that the museum will be “a cornerstone of the revitalization of Hollywood” and an example of the public-private partnerships that are creating Los Angeles’ “renaissance.”

Earl Lestz, chairman of the museum’s board and president of the Studio Group at Paramount, pledged that “in five months there’ll be a museum here,” though he joked that “nothing’s happened yet.”

Museum President and CEO Phyllis Caskey told the audience of several dozen, including singers John Raitt and Mel Torme; “Star Trek: Voyager’s” Jennifer Lien; and Hugh M. Hefner, who was celebrating his 70th birthday, that the museum will contain the “finest collection of entertainment memorabilia to be presented by state-of-the-art exhibiting.”

She said in a statement that the entertainment industry is “driving the state’s economy, employing more than a half-million people and pumping $16 billion into our economy. The museum will serve as tangible evidence of how important the entertainment industry is to tourism revenue.”

Designed by Barry Howard, the museum will be divided into three parts: a large main rotunda, flanked by east and west wings. A 15-foot Goddess of Entertainment will stand in the rotunda, holding symbols of four entertainment arts--radio, television, sound and movies.

The rotunda will also have the museum’s five permanent exhibits. Visitors will see life-sized figures of stars such as Charlie Chaplin, Cecil B. DeMille, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz and hear anecdotes about their careers. There will also be a fashion and makeup exhibit--noting such icons as Joan Crawford’s padded shoulders to Jennifer Aniston’s hair.

The west wing will be for rotating exhibits while the east wing will be the educational section, containing, among other facilities, classrooms devoted to editing, animation and sound recording and mixing.

In the works since 1984 and a vague dream for decades, the museum is the brainchild of former state Sen. and president pro tem, David Roberti, who represented Hollywood. With the March 21 approval of $2 million from Los Angeles’ Community Redevelopment Agency, museum officials, including Caskey, who had been Roberti’s administrative assistant, decided to formally break ground.

Another $2 million had already come from corporate and private funders including Citicorp and Taslimi Construction. Caskey is confident the remaining $1.5 million will be available. “There have been people just waiting for this to come together,” she said.

That it took 12 years to bring the project to lift off does not surprise Caskey. “This is sort of the incubation period for projects to happen,” she noted, “unless you have a single donor for all the money and build immediately so the price doesn’t escalate.”