A Movie Museum for Hollywood : Group to Unveil Plan for $45-Million Entertainment Center

After six years of stalls and struggles, organizers of a proposed museum dedicated to films and filmmaking say they have found a home in Hollywood.

Organizers of the Hollywood Entertainment Museum expect to unveil plans today for a $45-million, 110,000-square-foot center in the landmark 1928 building now housing the Hollywood Pacific movie theater on Hollywood Boulevard. The museum hopes to raise $10 million in the next couple of years to acquire the building and some nearby properties.

The group, which includes representatives from state and local government as well as show business, says the proposed four-story center will give tourists an opportunity to learn about the history of Hollywood entertainment from silent film to the latest in film techno-magic. Despite the current recession, plans call for the museum to open in 1995.

“It hasn’t been easy. We have two to 2 1/2 years to raise our funds,” said museum board president Phyllis Caskey. “The movie palace came up after other places fell through and it is such a wonderful mix of mission and site.”

The site is on the north side of Hollywood Boulevard on the block bounded by Wilcox, Cahuenga and Yucca. The theater, which is now owned by Pacific Warner Theater Corp., will continue to show films for the next two years while the museum staff occupies nearby office space.

In the meantime, museum officials plan to put up theme exhibits in shop windows along Hollywood Boulevard. The so-called “Hollywood Windows” will go up beginning in January and focus on motion pictures, television, radio and sound recordings.

The proposed museum will join a number of different organizations that preserve and celebrate Hollywood entertainment, including the Frances Howard Goldwyn Hollywood Library, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Center for Motion Picture Study and the Hollywood Studio Museum, which traces the history of movie pioneer Jesse Lasky’s Feature Play Company and Samuel Goldwyn and C.B. DeMille’s Famous Players. (New York also has its Museum of the Moving Image.)

The difference between existing museums and libraries, and the proposed Hollywood Entertainment Museum, said Caskey, is that it will have interpretive hands-on exhibits and displays that explain the entire history of film from silent film to high-tech special-effects films. It will also contain exhibits of 80 crafts involved in film using laser discs, computer graphics, animation techniques and high-definition TV. There will be a number of screening rooms showing snippets of periods in film.

“No one else is doing what we are doing,” said Caskey. “Many of the libraries are for people in the industry or students of film. We are in the middle of Hollywood and we are for the general public with a complete history of the art form of film with science and technology used to enhance the exhibits and explain the technology that goes into making it.

“People don’t understand what a cinematographer does. They don’t know what a director of special effects does. They can see what a set designer does. It will be a place where people can understand how film is created. There will be collections exhibited, but it is still up in the air what collections will be there.”

Caskey said she is talking to the motion picture academy about borrowing some of its collections.

The effort to establish a film museum has been ongoing by this particular Hollywood Entertainment Museum group since 1986, but the effort has been championed by different groups at different times over the last two decades. Among those supporting the Hollywood Entertainment Museum are veteran actress Debbie Reynolds (since the ‘70s), producer Jack Haley Jr., Councilman Michael Woo, whose district includes Hollywood, and Sen. David Roberti (D-Los Angeles).

Said Woo: “This is the culmination of a dream come true. It’s taken many years to come to this point. Tourists come to Hollywood Boulevard looking for something to do, looking for a trace of glamour. Sometimes people can ignore something precious because it’s right under your nose.

“We in L.A. have been doing that, losing jobs (in entertainment) to other places. The museum will provide a unique resource in Hollywood that will hold collections of the entertainment industry. And it’s a shot in the arm for redevelopment.”

Seed money for the project is coming from public and private sources. The museum has received more than $3 million, including $1 million in funds from the state in 1985. The group also plans to borrow as much as $5 million from the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency.

The rest, hopes Caskey, will come from individuals, companies and foundations.

“We don’t know whether or not the state or federal government will give more,” she said.

A major contributor has been developer Melvin Simon and Associates, which has been active in Hollywood area redevelopment projects. Some other contributors will announce their gifts today at a ceremony to be held at the site.

Most recently, the museum location was going to be part of the Melvin Simon project on the Hollywood Promenade, but things stalled because of a 4 1/2-year lawsuit brought by a community group against the Community Redevelopment Agency. That tied up $17 million in public funds. The suit was recently settled, however, and city officials are touting the museum as the official kick off to the rest of Hollywood’s redevelopment.

According to 1985 estimates made by economic consultants, the museum would bring in an additional $23 million a year in business to Hollywood. Those same consultants estimated that statewide the project would generate $40 million a year in additional economic activity and $2.6 million a year in additional sales tax revenues. Caskey said those figures will be updated.

Woo said that he is encouraged by the way Hollywood Boulevard is shaping up. The area has undergone a series of face-lifts recently with Disney’s restoration of Pacific Theatres’ El Capitan Theater and the regeneration of the Roosevelt Hotel. Galaxy Theaters, a General Cinema six-plex, will open this weekend.

And, he says, the council gave the first green light on the Hollywood Promenade project, where the American Cinematheque is planning to build a major showcase facility that will screen theme-oriented retrospective films year-round.

All financial headaches aside, Caskey and others say, the tangle of stalls and lawsuits have been worth it to realize the goal of preserving and revering the magic that has long been the Hollywood legacy.

“The story we’re telling,” says Caskey, “is the story of when entertainment started from the silent film era to radio and TV. We will give people a hands on, interpretive experience that is exciting, educational and fun.”