Unlikely Trove of Tinseltown Treasures

It’s a most unlikely place for Hollywood glitz: a former apple orchard surrounded by vineyards in the drowsy depths of wine country.

Yet if Hollywood had an attic, this would be it.

This tiny farm town is home to a remarkable collection of props and costumes and classic cars--all of it assembled by a retired landscaper whose biggest claim to motion picture fame was his $3-a-day role as a dead soldier in “Gone With the Wind.”

The man is George H. Smith. The collection, he calls Georgetown. And he’s not modest about its charms.

“You could stay here all day,” he says, “and never do justice to it.”

He’s right.

Striding through the mock Old West town he built to house his collection, talking faster than anyone can listen, Smith points out treasures he collected during the 1930s and ‘40s, when he worked on the fringes of Hollywood as a horse wrangler, a location scout, an extra and, eventually, a landscaper to the stars.

This buggy, he says, was driven by Clark Gable in “Gone With the Wind.” These swords were brandished by Errol Flynn in “They Died With Their Boots On.”

The golf clubs belonged to Bing Crosby. The jacket to Ronald Reagan. The 1928 Rolls-Royce to director Clarence Brown of “National Velvet” fame. Fred MacMurray wore that cowboy hat. Will Rogers swung this rope.

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And the 1950 Chrysler lovingly polished to a lush black gleam? Smith points out an illuminated MGM lion on the hood and the initials “LBM” stamped into the seats. This, he says with a proud-as-punch grin, was studio mogul Louis B. Mayer’s last personal limo.

“I can’t spell worth a damn, or I could have written books about all this,” Smith says. “I’ve got enough to fill several books.”

It’s impossible to verify all of his stories. But experts have authenticated some of his collection, and it seems certain that Smith, now 78, was in with the in crowd in Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Juliana and John Gensley, his neighbors on Mulholland Drive in the 1940s, recall Smith renting out his property for film shoots quite often. “The stars were in and out all the time,” says Juliana Gensley, a retired Cal State Long Beach history professor. “They were so commonplace up here, no one paid any attention to them.”

Those were the days when Hollywood really was a small town, when even the most swooned-over stars might take time to chat with a gregarious stagehand such as Smith. Smith’s yellowing autograph album features dozens of signatures from stars like Debbie Reynolds, Fred Crane and Will Rogers, many of whom scrawled personal messages joking about his tree planting or his bit-part acting.

“The stars seemed to have the kind of close relationships with [crew members] that would be unimaginable today,” says Rick Jewell, professor of critical studies at the USC Film School. “Many of them came out to Hollywood without any expectations, and even when they suddenly became huge stars, they remained close to their roots.”

As landscaper to the likes of Gable, Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea, Smith was in a perfect position to collect their castoffs--Hollywood knickknacks that no one else seemed to want.

“People back then had no notion of the kind of nostalgia value that would attach to these things over the years,” Jewell says.

Smith wasn’t thinking of value when he gathered up discarded movie props or sweat-stained cowboy hats. He was simply an incurable pack rat, with a passion for preserving history as it was made.

“As long as I can remember,” he told an interviewer years ago, “I always said I wanted to keep a little bit of the past.”

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Guided by this philosophy, Smith has turned Georgetown into an eclectic and highly personal museum that includes not only Hollywood memorabilia, but also a jumble of family heirlooms and antique tools. He traces his roots to the Sepulveda clan, one of the original California land grant families, and he proudly displays his great-grandmother’s leather sidesaddle and a wooden bed his grandfather carved.

He also shows off antique kettles, a complete set of turn-of-the-century blacksmith tools and a bicycle once owned by renowned plant breeder Luther Burbank. He even has the first car he ever bought, a 1915 Model T purchased for $5 from razor magnate King C. Gillette.

“He has all manner of esoteric things from California’s past, things that most people don’t know the use for, so they throw them away,” says Adrian Praetzellis, an associate professor of anthropology at Sonoma State University who has authenticated some of the collection.

Local museums have tapped Smith’s trove from time to time to augment exhibits. But he refuses to parcel out his collection permanently. He does not want to split up Georgetown. And so far, he has found no museum willing to take it all.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine an institution that would be able to integrate all of Georgetown, from the calendar featuring rare nude photos of Marilyn Monroe to the braided ropes that one of Smith’s uncles made in San Quentin Prison while serving time for horse theft.

“It’s wonderful stuff, but we don’t have the space for it, which is a tragedy,” says Eric Nelson, executive director of the Sonoma County Museum.

Just separating the clutter from the collectibles would be a daunting task because Smith has stuffed every dusty corner of Georgetown with artifacts, including newspaper clippings detailing his own exploits as “Lung Busting Smitty,” a Marine demolition sergeant in World War II.

Although he has not been able to convert Georgetown into a public museum, Smith has always welcomed visitors to his 30-acre ranch. He likes to give tours because he genuinely loves people; the way he tells it, he managed a gas station for his first nine years in Sonoma County simply as a way to meet people. Later, he designed the landscaping for Sonoma State and served as a director of the county fair board.

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Along the way, he has strengthened his ties to this town of 7,500 by hosting countless fund-raisers and political picnics at Georgetown. Most visitors are amazed at the place. “You think, ‘My God, here this stuff is in the middle of our county,’ ” says Harry Lapham, one of Smith’s oldest friends.

For all the delight he takes in Georgetown, Smith says he has been “very seriously thinking” of selling off parts of his collection, now that he recognizes that no museum will take it all.

But as he whirls through Georgetown showing off his dearest treasures, he never once mentions the prices they could fetch. Instead, he talks of the names and dates and stories behind each piece.

His son Guy understands why. It’s the same reason, really, that Georgetown exists.

“It’s because we can only speculate about the future,” Guy Smith says, “but the past, we can learn about.”