Wm. S. Hart Museum in LA Times
BlakeMF
section on the William S. Hart Museum.
Here is the info:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-000067542aug20_2.story?coll=la%2Dhead
lines%2Dcalifornia.
Michael F. Blake
R H Draney
It's that damn bus...when we were kids growing up in Newhall, we'd run
around the petting zoo all the time, but only once or twice did we
ever feel up to climbing that hill on foot, and that was when a smoggy
day was a rarity that far out...I don't know a lot of adults now who'd
even try it today....
Hmmm...maybe they could harness a team of those peacocks and have 'em
pull a buckboard....r
A. Melon
Los Angeles Times: A Western Star Is Fading Fast
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http://www.latimes.com/templates/misc/printstory.jsp?slug=la%2D000067542aug
20%5F2
LOS ANGELES
A Western Star Is Fading Fast
Museum: Cowboy actor William S. Hart left his home to the public, but
visitors are few. Many have forgotten the man who made 60 movies and was
'ridiculously popular' in his time.
By PATRICIA WARD BIEDERMAN
Times Staff Writer
August 20 2001
It's the plumbing that tends to stick in the minds of visitors to Santa
Clarita's William S. Hart Museum, not the fact that it was the home of one
of the most famous cowboys in silent films, said administrator Janis
Ashley.
"They're very impressed that we have seven bathrooms in the house," she
said with a laugh. "Forget that we have an outstanding art collection."
Helping visitors see the man behind the bathrooms is only one of the
challenges faced by Ashley and her sole staffer. The William S. Hart house
is the museum nobody seems to know, despite its administrative ties to the
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in Exposition Park. The larger
problem might be Hart himself and how time can dim even the brightest
celebrity. One of the creators of the Western film and, in his day, the
most popular screen actor in America, Hart made more than 60 movies, all of
them silent.
Pushed off the screen by Tom Mix and other more charismatic cowboys, the
long-faced actor saw his stardom crumble like old film stock. Today, only
historians and hard-core film and Western buffs have the vaguest idea who
the tall, laconic cowboy actor was, Ashley said.
Hart's diminished profile is reflected in the number of visitors to the
hilltop Hart Museum. According to Ashley, 15,000 visit annually. In
contrast, the Getty Center averages more than 10,000 visitors a weekend.
Having shot movies in the Santa Clarita Valley, Hart bought land there and
built a 22-room house crammed with art and artifacts, including a choice
collection of Navajo rugs. The house, which cost $100,000, had features
only a star could afford, including a spiral staircase, a built-in food
warmer in the dining room and a hallway telephone booth. Paintings by pal
Charlie Russell and others hung on the walls, alongside Hart's saddles and
a pair of samurai swords.
Located on San Fernando Road, off the Antelope Valley and Golden State
freeways, the house went to the county on Hart's death in 1946. As he
explained in a speech: "While I was making pictures, the people gave me
their nickels, dimes and quarters. When I am gone, I want them to have my
home."
"Part of our problem is you can't see it from the street," Ashley said.
"You have to be sort of ambitious to come to the William S. Hart Museum."
What Ashley means is that you have to be willing to trudge a third of a
mile up a winding road from the parking lot, often in punishing heat, past
a sign that warns of rattlesnakes.
In the past, the museum had a van that carried visitors up the hill. It's
in poor condition now, and the museum doesn't have the money for a driver.
On a recent weekday afternoon, a half-dozen visitors made the trek. Edna
Arias of North Hollywood had brought her son, Helbert, 21, and daughter,
Natalie, 6. Helbert had been here as a child and remembered Hart's
collection of firearms.
As they walked, the air was tangy with eucalyptus, small creatures rustled
in the brush and, at one point, a pastoral vista of the Santa Clarita
Valley appeared. They passed eight bison, descendants of buffalo donated by
Walt Disney in the 1960s.
Arias said she likes to bring the children here to savor nature.
Michael Mahoney, 49, who works at a dairy in Michigan, was visiting with
James and Karen Moran of Lancaster. Before the tour, James Moran stood
outside the house savoring its Spanish colonial style.
"I'm drawn to this kind of architecture," he said. "Aluminum siding, that's
the big thing in Michigan."
From Classical Actor to 'Two-Gun Bill'
Ashley, who was a volunteer at the museum for 13 years, rattles off Hart
facts and anecdotes. Born in the 1860s in Newburgh, N.Y., Hart was a
classical actor before he came West. He made his first Western at 49 and
soon became known as "the good-bad man" and "two-gun Bill."
Ashley points to a picture of Hart, who was 6-foot-2, towering over tiny
Mary Pickford, and explains that he was once as celebrated as Pickford,
Douglas Fairbanks and even Charlie Chaplin.
"He was ridiculously popular," Ashley said. "People loved him."
Ashley appreciates Hart's pivotal role in shaping the idea of the American
West.
"William S. Hart was the first cowboy actor to bring authenticity to the
Western film," she said. Real cowboys didn't wear braid and sequins like
Tom Mix and other rhinestone cowboys, and neither did Hart. "A lot of
cowboys wore old Civil War uniforms--leftovers."
Paula Marantz Cohen is an English professor and film historian at Drexel
University who wrote about Hart in a new book, "Silent Film and the Triumph
of the American Myth." She also credits Hart with creating a more authentic
Western.
Dust kicked up by galloping horses was one of those touches, Cohen said.
Hart was the first Western filmmaker to forgo wetting down the location and
shoot the scene dust and all.
When Cohen teaches courses in silent film, Hart is always a hard sell: "His
screen persona doesn't work as well as Douglas Fairbanks'; students can
still relate to Fairbanks." Today's students also tend to be gaga for
Buster Keaton, she said. Hart's dour, moralistic character lacks widespread
appeal, she said, and the movies themselves present a problem. They seem
much more dated than, say, those of Chaplin.
Beth Werling is the collections manager at the Natural History Museum, and
she is quick to emphasize how important Hart was.
"He was not the first actor to make a Western, but he brought the strongest
vision of the West to viewers," she said. "He was the foremost interpreter
of the West as a place that needed to be tamed or civilized by
Anglo-Americans."
Hart brought to the screen the same view of America that Theodore Roosevelt
brought to his bully pulpit and that Frederic Remington gave American art
galleries, Werling said.
That view repels many contemporary Americans. "It's very difficult to
appreciate a Hart film today," she said, "because there's a lot of
righteous violence, there's sexism, there's racism." Nonetheless, the
good-bad man that Hart created persists in the Western protagonists of
Clint Eastwood and others, Werling said.
No Filmmakers Can Use the House
The museum's fund-raising options are limited by the terms of Hart's will,
Ashley notes. Admission to the museum is free, as is parking, and must
remain so. And no one can benefit commercially from the property. That
means the museum can't make extra money the way so many locals do: by
renting out the house to filmmakers.
"I'm not sure I'd want them filming in the house. I've heard horror
stories," said Ashley. But she'd be happy to see some wealthy benefactor
pour money into the institution, as businessman George C. Page did for the
museum at the La Brea tar pits named his honor, which is also linked to the
Natural History Museum.
Natural History foots the bill for such Hart Museum needs as killing
whatever was living in Hart's 13 buffalo coats. The garments were cleaned,
frozen and unfrozen and tucked away in acid-free boxes. The Friends of the
William S. Hart Park and Museum spent almost $45,000 last year on projects
such as creating a library of Hart movies.
The Natural History Museum also spends $100,000 a year for two full-time
educators, including Ashley, according to Ann Muscat, its executive vice
president. That money helps provide tours to about 6,000 school children
annually and underwrites a program that brought two Hart Museum
programs--one on the Chumash Indians, the other on cowboys--into 55
classrooms last year.
Plans Underway to Boost Image
Unlike grander museums, the Hart Museum has an informal air. "Our tours are
not set in stone," said Ashley. "It's not like Disney, where you get to the
hippo and have to [give a predetermined spiel]."
Muscat said the Natural History Museum is working on a master plan to raise
the profile of all three branches. One likely change will be the showcasing
of its Hollywood collection, which is now open only to scholars. The Hart
collection, which includes his business records, is an important part of
the Hollywood material, she said.
But Muscat has no illusions that visitors will flock to Santa Clarita, no
matter how vividly Hart's story is told.
"Some people on the Westside," she said, "perceive Exposition Park as too
far to go."
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Early Film
For someone going to Cinecon with no transportation other than public
transportation, is a trip to here possible?
Earl.
Precode
Not really. From Hollywood, it's close to an hour north on assorted
freeways...and that's assuming little or no traffic.
Mike S.
"I've got a gun! (pause) Not here, but I've got one."--Leslie Nielsen in
WRONGFULLY ACCUSED