Hi Willy , I worked for James F.Sr back in 69/70 driving and hauling cars between Santa Paula & Saticoy warehouses bown to Picture Car Co. in La. and Movieworld in Anaheim. Mitch was the restoration / mechanic he was kool guy working out of the SP warehouse/shop we had fun working onthe cars.
I spent many weekends when I was a kid at the Brucker's Cars of the Stars. Many of the SoCal car clubs used to "rent" the parking lot and have swap meets there, sometimes two or three a month. The Early Times Hot Rod Club was one of them. Back in the day, those were great swap meets. My father used to collect antique toys and used to run a toy show in the parking lot a couple of times a year. Both Brucker Sr. and Jr. were nice guys and had a very keen eye when it came to quality cars-and knew how to buy and sell them too! In addition to their movie cars, they had an impressive collection of "big classics". One of the main reasons they decided to sell the place was that property values in that area started to rise like crazy, and, from memory, that got a huge amount of money for the land. I remember asking Jim as a kid "why are you selling the place?" and he said "I can't afford not too!" Many of the "movie" cars in the museum got sold at Rick Cole's "Pacific Auto Rental and Movie World Collection" Auction in downtown Los Angeles (now that was a great auction!!). I saw Jim Jr. at Monterey a couple of years ago, he's still buying some cars!
GZ, that's a great story. I had not heard of the Rick Cole connection before. I'm working on trying to establish a timeline for my Herbie and I know the Brucker's owned the car From at least 1974 or so through 1980 when it was sold to the Harrah's Collection, but I am not sure of the nature of the sale. Whether by private sale or by auction. I know Harrah's ended up with a handful of cars from Movie World outside of my car.
After Bill Harrah's death, the Bruckers made a very strategic and smart deal with the people running Harrahs at the the time (Holiday Inn Corporation, who purchased the entire Harrah assets including all the casinos,hotels the collection, etc) where some of their "movie" cars were traded for significant brass and classic era cars.The Bruckers made out real well on this deal. It was falsely believed that the Harrah collection would continue under Holiday Inn Corporation as a large museum and these movie cars would be an attraction. However, this did not happen and the Harrah collection was sold in its entirety (about 1,500 cars) with the exception of about 100 cars that got dontated to the city of Reno and became the National Automobile Museum that exists today. I worked for Harrahs during the liquidation years cataloging the collection for the auctions, etc. I remember your Herbie Beetle being there and remember it selling at the auction, but don't really know much about it.
I heard the Bruckers started out renting cars to the movie studios possibly in the fifties. I think they supplied twenties cars for movies like Some Like It Hot. They would buy whatever kind of car the studio needed and usually collect enough rent to pay for the car. When they got a warehouse full of cars someone got the idea of opening a museum.
Yep, I've got the bill of sale from 84 when Harrah's sold the car, but I have nothing on to who sold it. I've also got copies of the Nevada title, statement of facts and bunch of other Nevada state paperwork, a Holiday Inn transfer of title statements. A friend of mine even found an original auction catalog and gave it to me not realising that my car was in it. I'm waiting on a file from the National Automobile Museum that they have on my car from its time at Harrah's including pictures. So it should be an interesting read.
The big company in Los Angeles that rented out cars for the movies was Pacific Auto Rental. They started way, way back with the advent of the movie industry in Los Angeles. When Pacific Auto Rental's collection was sold by Rick Cole (with added lots from Brucker's Cars of the Stars) the collection ranged from Model Ts and As that were used in original Laurel and Hardy movies to Duesenbergs and other Full Classic and brass cars (keep in mind, when they were renting these cars out in the beginning they were just used old cars). Pacific Auto Rental had hundreds of cars (maybe into the 1000s) at one point. By the time the final auction occurred (I think in the late 1980s?), there were a couple of hundred left. While the Bruckers did rent cars out to the movies, they started much, much later and by this time, the cars were actually collector's cars.
I have nothing useful to add as i grew up in dusty New Mexico.... all I wanted to say was THIS THREAD ROCKS! (giggle/wrings hands)
Where is the best place to find pictures of the museum exhibits? I have a sign that is thought to be from there.
I've only seen a handful of pictures floating around. Nothing great though. You can usually find old post cards for sale on eBay.
wow, great info. please keeping this going. Thanks. here are some online sites that contain more info on stuff discussed here: planesoffame.org ... www.mrsharkey.com/busbarn/vondutch/vondutch.htm ... www.octhen.com/2008/02/movieworld-cars-of-stars.htm ... www.earlyamusementparksoforangecounty.blogspot.com/2009/09/movie-world-cars-of-stars .html
Here are some shots of the some of the signs from the Cars of Stars Museum, from the Brucker Auction at the Peterson in 2006. I think you might be able to tell some of the Dutch signs from the Roth Signs.
I was reading some old magazines last night that I bought this past fall, came across a full page add for the closing out auction in 73. Full page that lists some of the cars and details about the auction. Will post the pic tonight.
Great Scan! Thanks for sharing that. It should be noted, however, that this was not for the closing out auction, but for the first annual auction that would be held at the location for the next few years. The auctions were a combination of outside consignments as well as some of the Museum's cars. These auctions were the first of their type to occur in SoCal and were conducted by the famous Kruse Company of Indiana who was already starting to establish themselves as vintage car auctioneers. I remember one of the last auctions they had there and watching a consigned, green Model J Duesenberg Phaeton sell for 100,000.00. This was an all time record for a Duesenberg at the time (maybe even for any vintage car?) and became big, national news. That same car would have another "0" added to the amount today!
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