Hollywood Museums in Vietnam and Ohio

By Allan Maurer

The interest in movie memorabilia stretches from Cleveland, Ohio to Ho Chi Min City in Vietnam.

We ran across two interesting items about museums with mouth-watering collections. Thirty years ago, Nguyen Thanh Liem worked at a Beverly Hills beauty parlor and had a steady clientele of movie stars from the silent era to western and action films popular in movie heyday.
Liem collected about 2,000 signed photos of Hollywood stars, many from the silent era, as well as 40,000 costumes, more than 1,000 pairs of shoes that once belonged to famous singers and Hollywood stars, as well as some of their love letters.

The collection includes many other pop cultural items, including documents about John F. Kennedy and other signatures from United State presidents and vice presidents, mementos of Muhammad Ali, and memorabilia focused on Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and Madonna.

For the full story “A hair-dresser turns curator with a personal collection of Hollywood memorabilia,” click here.

A Christmas Story Museum

“You’ll shoot your eye out!” says Ralphie Parker’s mother about his dream of having Santa deliver a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas in the holiday favorite movie “A Christmas Story.”
This Thanksgiving, a number of the original cast members, including Scott Schwartz, who, as Flick, got his tongue frozen to the flagpole, and Ian Petrella, the actor who played Raphie’s little brother, will celebrate the film’s 25th anniversary at the plain clapboard house in Cleveland, Ohio, used to shoot all the exterior shots in the film.

The house is now a museum that displays props, costumes, memorabilia and photos from the movie, which fan Brian Jones opened in 2006. The museum draws about 35,000 visitors a year. Across the street, at the gift shop, you can buy a talking Ralphie doll.

To visit the “A Christmas Story” Museum website, click here.

This is not the first time that Pickford’s possessions have been up for sale. The December 2006 sale by Julien’s offered more than 200 items from the legendary actress’ collection, which featured a collection of personal correspondence from Douglas Fairbanks to Pickford that sold for more than $28,000.

Saturday and Sunday’s auction, too, had some standouts. The auction sales, under the expert auctioneering skills of Kathleen Guzman, started slow with a great portion of the continental furniture going way below estimates, and the trend continued throughout the first and second sessions. However, Lot 268, the 103-piece dinner service by Capo di Monte exceeded its estimate of $8,000 to $10,000, selling for $13,000.

The silver for the most part made a poor showing with the exception of the Victorian-era Elkington Epergne centerpiece, Lot 272, which sold within its $1,500 to $2,500 estimate for $2,000.

Session three, which included expected heavy hitters, saw more activity and higher bidding. Lot 411, the Mercier portrait of three children in a landscape, did not meet its estimate of $25,000 to $35,000, instead selling for $15,000. Next up were the Paul de Longpre oil-on-canvas botanicals, Lots 412 and 413, that sold, again below or just touching their estimates at $17,000 and $20,000, respectively.

The collection of Rodin-style watercolors, discovered to be the works of the infamous forger Ernst Durig with an estimate of $8,000 to $10,000, crashed at $1,000. The landscape attributed to Asher Durand with an estimate of $25,000 to $35,000 made a poor showing at $5,000. This was one of my picks, but upon personal close examination of the painting, it was clear that this was not a Durand. The painting lacked the luminosity and depth of detail attributed to his works.

Haseltine horse is a winner

There was no surprise that Lot 423, the Herbert Haseltine sculpture of a Percheron horse exceeded its estimate of $20,000 to $30,000. A New York dealer purchased it for $34,000. Haseltine’s works, which consisted largely of equestrian statues and were commissioned throughout his career by the rich and famous, hold their value, and it’s possible that this piece was purchased for immediate sale to a client.

The show wrapped up with the excitement of session four’s sale of the autograph book, Lot 749, which had an estimate of $6,000 to $8,000. This impressive collection of personalized autographs from 1926 through 1981 included the luminaries of the century such as Albert Einstein, Amelia Earhart, Pearl Buck, Lillian Gish, Mussolini, George Bernard Shaw, Jonas Salk, FDR, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and hundreds more. To a serious collector of autographs, this collection would be at the center and a jewel to own. It went for $19,000.

– By Christopher Kent, a member of the WorthPoint board of advisers and director of evaluations for WorthPoint. He is also an antiques and collectibles generalist, fine-arts broker and president of CTK Design.

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