Third Time Capsule Could Be the Charm

This time Hollywood leaders say they’ve finally figured out how to handle time.

Hollywood’s hard-luck time capsule at the corner of Sunset and Vine was replaced Friday for the third time by community leaders who hope that this time its contents will survive until 2037.

Tinseltown memorabilia, including a recording of a Jack Benny radio show and a script from “I Love Lucy,” were buried in 1954 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Hollywood moviemaking. But 14 years later, when the container was temporarily unearthed after NBC radio and TV studios at the corner were razed, the contents were found to have disintegrated.

A replacement capsule containing an original script and film print of “Gone With the Wind” and another Jack Benny audiotape was buried in 1968. At the time, community leaders asked that it be opened in 2004, just as the first one had intended to be.

But when it was dug up Friday, a crowd watching at the corner discovered that the replacement contents had disintegrated too.

“There’s ‘Gone With the Wind.’ It’s gone with the wind,” said Johnny Grant, Hollywood’s honorary mayor, as a corroded film-reel box was gingerly lifted from the reopened capsule. “To Be Opened Feb. 15, 2004” was painted in faded lettering on the capsule’s side.

“Our memorabilia won’t be like this when our capsule is opened in 2037,” Grant pledged.

Leaders of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce say local leaders apparently understood glamour better than geology, both in 1954 and 1968. Moisture leaked into both capsules -- despite their having been bolted shut and enclosed in concrete vaults.

For their new capsule, officials purchased a professionally built, hermetically sealed stainless steel box. It is designed so that its lid’s 12 bolts do not penetrate the container and possibly let water in, and its opening is sealed with a moisture-blocking silicone O ring.

“We guarantee it,” said Janet Reinhold, director of Future Packing and Preservation, the Covina firm that built the $1,500 capsule. “If it fails we’ll replace the unit. But not the contents.”

Of course, when it’s dug up on Hollywood’s 150th anniversary in 2037, the capsule’s contents will probably be irreplaceable.

Actress Gloria Stuart, who appeared in the movie “Titanic,” placed a DVD copy of it in the box. Actress Joanna Cassidy contributed a DVD of her “Six Feet Under” television show, and child actors Madylin Sweeten, 12, and her 8-year-old twin brothers Sullivan and Sawyer added a DVD of their “Everybody Loves Raymond” TV show. Betty Lasky, daughter of the late director Jesse Lasky, turned over a DVD re-recording of “The Squaw Man” -- Hollywood’s first full-length feature.

“By the time 2037 rolls around, they probably won’t know what a DVD is. So we’re putting a DVD player inside too,” Grant said.

The corner of Sunset and Vine was ground zero of original Hollywood. “The Squaw Man” was filmed in the Lasky-DeMille Barn, which originally stood on the site. Later, Paramount Studios used the corner and, in 1938, NBC opened its Streamline Moderne-styled “Radio City” studios there for radio and eventually television. A savings and loan took over the site after NBC moved to Burbank in 1964.

Items placed Friday in the new capsule included: a “Happy Days” cast card signed by Henry Winkler, DVDs of “S.W.A.T.” and “Spiderman,” 73 small “Best Picture” Oscar posters, a shingle from the original roof of the Lasky-DeMille Barn, a Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis radio script, a Marilyn Monroe stamp cachet signed by Jane Russell, radio scripts from “Fibber McGee & Molly” and “George Burns & Gracie Allen” and copies of Friday’s daily newspapers and trade papers. There was also a necklace that had been worn by Nicole Kidman in “Moulin Rouge.”

CDs of the “Best Radio Commercials” of the last 50 years, of Bob Hope radio broadcasts and of Gene Autry’s singing were included.