DEBBIE REYNOLDS MOVIE COLLECTION

FINDS NEW L.A. HOME  

By Edmund Newton 

April 19, 2001

Actress Debbie Reynolds' huge collection of movie memorabilia, which she has been amassing for 30 years, is on the verge of finding a new home in Hollywood, associates said Wednesday.

The collection, including Judy Garland's gingham dress in   "The Wizard of Oz," a pair of her ruby slippers and the billowing "subway skirt" which Marilyn Monroe wrestled with in "The Seven Year Itch," has been without a permanent museum space since her hotel and casino venture in Las Vegas went broke in 1997.

Reynolds' foundation is expected to complete a deal this  week with TrizecHahn Corp., giving Reynolds' collection the top floor of a $500-million entertainment, dining and retail project now under construction on Hollywood Boulevard. The development also includes the Kodak Theatre, the new home of the Academy of Motion Pictures' annual Oscar presentations.

Having a prime 20,000-square-foot Hollywood location for her collection is "a dream come true," said Reynolds, 69.

"This is Hollywood's history," she said. "It's the only work I've known since I was 16. It's my family."

The collection, including 3,000 costumes from films made from the Silent Era to the 1970s, as well as thousands of sets and pieces from those movies, is worth millions of dollars, said Todd Fisher, 34, the general manager of the foundation administering  the collection. Fisher is Reynolds' son from her marriage with singer Eddie Fisher.

Collection Includes Entire Sets
The collection includes entire sets and costumes from such movies as "Planet of the Apes" (1968) "Gigi" (1954), "Hello Dolly" (1969), as well as films that Reynolds herself starred in, including "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" and "Singin' in the Rain."

Todd Fisher, in an interview, said his mother's collection should open at its new home in Nov. 8 and will be known as the Hollywood Motion Picture Collection. He said that only some minor issues remain  to be worked out before the deal is set. The TrizecHahn development is on Hollywood Boulevard at Highland Boulevard, at the heart of Hollywood's preservation movement.

"Think about it," said Jack Illes, a spokesman for TrizecHahn. "We've got three beautiful old theaters around us, the Egyptian, the El Capitan and the Chinese and we're across the street from the Hollywood Roosevelt, where the first Academy Awards were given out. This is really the touchstone of the motion picture industry in America."

When the collection is on view, Reynolds displays it as segments of a movie, with the costumes shown on actual movie sets. "I didn't want to have just mannequins standing there," Reynolds said. "That would be boring." The idea was to recreate actual scenes from movies, complete  with the original furniture and costumes. The displays are often accompanied by video clips from the original movies with Reynolds' own voice-overs.

Only Part to Go On Display

Fisher said his mother can, like other hobbyists, be obsessive about tracking down items to complete a tableau.

"She just got a piece from the 1954 movie 'Desiree,"' Fisher said. "She had some spectacular costumes that Marlon Brando wore, and also Jean Simmons and Merle Oberon. But she always wanted the Michael Rennie costume." Rennie played Napoleon's rival, General Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte. Reynolds tracked the costume down to a private collector, who finally sold it through an auction house that specializes in historical artifacts, Fisher said.

"It's no different from a collector of glasswork pieces or stamps," he said. "My mother can be just as obsessed about getting the full set."

Reynolds' hobby has added to her financial travails, though it's a burden she has gladly borne, Fisher said. "My mother goes in and out of being flush, depending on whether she's married or not," Fisher said. "If she hasn't been married for a while, she's pretty flush. But even if she's broke, she still has to ability to go out and earn $100,000 or $200,000 in a week."

By now, the collection has gotten so large, Fisher said, that only a small portion of it can be displayed at any given time. Even with the availability of 20,000 square feet, only about 20 percent of Reynolds' memorabilia will be shown, he said, while the rest will be in storage.

While Reynolds has, until recently, gotten little support for her efforts from the Hollywood studios, she has received some assistance from some unlikely sources. Elizabeth Taylor recently donated a suit of armor worn by her late ex-husband Richard Burton in "Cleopatra" (1963).

Taylor, who once had a notorious relationship with Eddie Fisher when he was married to Reynolds, has also agreed to make her participation on-going. "Liz has agreed to join the board of the foundation," Todd Fisher said.