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UPDATE: With Warner Bros now asking its departments to cut their budgets by at least 10%, which will mean layoffs, the studio is selling everything including the kitchen sink. It's all very hush-hush that Warner Bros will be putting up a bunch of valuable Hollywood memorabilia from old backlot props. According to the January 2009 issue of Art & Antiques magazine, the to-be-auctioned furniture pieces include the intricately carved wood furniture of German-born cabinetmakers Gustave and Christian Herter which decorated the homes of Gilded Age robber barons like JP Morgan and William Henry Vanderbilt. (Appropriate, yes?) These so-called "expressions of power and riches" were auctioned off by San Francisco-based Butterfields in 1942 and snapped up by Hollywood studios looking to fill their prop houses. As a result, their furniture has endured because of innumerable films. The mag says the auction will take place January 26th at New York's Bonhams & Butterfields where 15 Herter pieces from Warner Bros.’ prop department will be sold. Including this Aesthetic Movement ebonized and marquetry bedstead (est. $300,000–500,000) that's 7 feet high and originally sat in the master bedroom of railroad magnate and California Governor Milton Latham's Menlo Park mansion Thurlow Lodge. The Herters' surviving work has been commanding record prices in the past two decades. But I don't understand why, if the auction is coming up so soon, Warner Bros wouldn't want as much publicity about it as possible. What gives? Even the auction house seemed pissed that I knew about it. Warner Bros has only a "No comment". Lemme see, outsourcing, garage sales, trying to settle the Watchmen lawsuit rather than give more billable hours to outside counsel... What else can WB do to save money?
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What else can WB do to save money?
Perhaps paying executives based on their work and only giving bonuses to people who deserve it, and only in the amounts they properly deserve.
I’m waiting til their share of the CW come up for sale. Then when I buy Viacom at Sumner Redstone’s garage sale for the change I found in my couch, I’ll own my own network. Sure it’s a crappy network, but it’ll be a start.
Okay Nikki you just piqued my interest bigtime…I am sure this is not good news for WB but could be great news for collectors depending on what Bonham & Butterfield will have available for sale.
Any time or place info? I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on some used Batman outfits… early Halloween shopping!
They could ditch the CW entirely. Why anyone would want to keep throwing money down that rathole is beyond me. I’d rather hang on to the “Casablanca” costumes or the falcon from the “Maltese Falcon” or whatever else they’ve got, any day of the week.
Save money? just get out of the TV/movie business and let the professionals handle it? That be a great start.
When’s the auction? I’d like to bid on five years of my life and my love of the entertainment industry.
I must add that it’s better that they are doing that, than cutting jobs like many of the other studios and production companies in town….thinking outside the box of ways to cut costs isn’t always a bad thing….
LOL to OtherPointofView’s post. Think again if WB is not cutting jobs. They are!!!!
Usually this would be a non-story, but the other sales were basically goodwill sales in order to have the fans have a crack at stuff from their favorite movies. Warner Bros is hurting too much to not have the sale. With that said, what would you do with the CW if you owned it Furious D?
Speaking as an employee of WB, I’d rather they do that than cut my and my husband’s job.
What happened to all the money THE DARK NIGHT raked in? Or are we not supposed to ask? Odd how a studio can brag about how much money they’ve made one minute then turn around and be in a position to have to do a garage sale. For shame.
Oh wait. They could have actually released the latest HARRY POTTER.
Everybody needs some cash this recession season!
Here’s a thought . . . they could sell off that canker sore called AOL to Google, hack off their stake in The CW and sell it to CBS (hey, CBS pretty much runs that abysmal channel already and Warners isn’t really all that committed to the channel), and syndicate more scripted shows, over-the-air movies, and cartoons in the local affiliate marketplace (there’s going to be a whole lot of digital subchannels, and something’s got to air on them).
To OtherPointOfView:
The layoffs are coming this week too.
Items like this must have been in storage for years… What else must be buried there?!?!???
It is a bit of a conundrum for WB to have these very expensive antiques sitting around, ’cause at those prices they sure ain’t props anymore. Might be like selling off their corporate art collections.
I’d be real uncomfortable having those sitting in a warehouse if I was management.
Well that and they’re pretty fugly.
Yeah, this is a non-story. Back-lot props get sold off all the time. And even at that, whatever money Warner makes from the sale, if it’s into the tens of millions isn’t really going to do much for Warner’s bottom line either way, directly or not.
My guess is the obvious one — it’s simple practicality: they need the storage space for newer (and often smaller) props, even smaller-but-still-large furniture items that they can more readily rent out. There’s no sense in keeping even most valuable antiques such as the pictured bed as they’re less and less likely to get rented out simply due to their period and how much space they take up. And because as they increase in value, it’s just plain more and more stupid to just let them sit there gathering dust when they should be getting special care at either a museum or in a personal collection.
Although they’d better not get rid of those two towering chandeliers. Those are just freaking awesome. I’ve taken the studio tour two times and those chandeliers just don’t get old. I would hope, though, that Warner would put them on permanent-ish loan to a museum.
As for why the auction house and Warner are trying to keep the auction quiet — my guess would be that there are certain spectacular pieces that they’re trying to sell before the auction and they simply didn’t want the news about those items getting out too soon, especially given that the likely buyers are peeps that still have big pockets even in this economy and the wake of the Madoff Ponzi Scheme.
They’d just better be keeping whatever props they have left from Gilmore Girls ’cause they owe us an actual series finale, goshdarnit!
My guess is that some of the auction items likely made it into Gilmore Girls episodes as props in the Elder Gilmore residence. Case in point, Jackson does mention in a season two episode that Emily was using a tape measure that she bought from Neiman Marcus. The reference is in the episode “Dead Uncles and Vegetables” where Lorelai and Rory run Luke’s diner while Luke has to plan a funeral for a uncle of his that everyone in Stars Hollow despises.
In any case, the elder Gilmores are very rich and anyone is likely to spot any of those props throughout the series.
With that said, what would you do with the CW if you owned it Furious D?
Well, I’m not FuriousD, but I’d start with trying to knock some sense into Dawn Ostroff so that the network could return to the type of quality programming it had when it was The WB, instead of cranking out cookie-cutter shows featuring nothing but spoiled, whoring, rich teens. I mean, there ARE people who could be watching that aren’t teen girls! The only quality shows it has have been left behind from the days of WB: Supernatural and Smallville. What ever happened to diversification?
Clearly Warner Bros wanted to keep this auction quiet because if they made a big deal about it (coupled with the news they are cutting 10% out of their budget) people would get the wrong impression….
Well, they managed to avoid that.
Good job all round.
I watch and love SUPERNATURAL on the CW, so I’d like to see it stick around, if only for that. Thank you!
Holy cow they’re going to be selling Herter Brothers pieces?!?! Outta my league price-wise for sure, especially if those pieces can be traced to their use in specific films and possibly to specific stars.
There’s potentially some big big money here (six figures per piece minimum starting bids people)
By the way Abraham Lincoln’s wife Mary Todd Lincoln when she was First Lady was also a Herter Brothers client, their early Victorian pieces are prized for their fine craftsmanship in an era when the masses started to buy much lower quality factory made furniture for their homes. Buying Herter Brothers then meant you were either a robber baron or a robber barron wannabe (Mrs Lincoln was in the latter category).
There are still some Lincoln Herter Brothers pieces in the White House and for some strange reason even Mount Vernon has a few Herter Brothers pieces (they may have been owned by descendents of the Washington or Custis families which would explain why they’re in the Mount Vernon collection).
These folks are not mere props or scenery. But the fact that they’ve been in films will definitely add to the final price (assuming of course the pieces have been well stored and no major harm has come to them while they’ve been squirreled away somewhere.
And an Aesthetic movement suite (think Oscar Wilde, the Gilbert & Sullivan opera Patience and ‘back to nature’ people if you don’t know what aestheticism is, and it’s more than just late Victorian period furniture & design)! The mind boggles at what that might look like. Americans never got as into aestheticism in as big a way as the Europeans did but that will only add to the price, that rarity. Especially if it is an American made aesthetic set.
Nikki’s right, this would be like selling family heirlooms or the crown jewels in one’s collection if this furniture were in the possessions of a family or a collector. WB has to be in bad financial shape to convert this calibre of stuff to cash.
Victorian period furniture is a little past its supernova hot period where the price accelerations (which took place in the 1980s) would make your head swim
If they want to really clear some space, have them take all the unproduced scripts they paid for and are still sitting on and give them back to the writers.
Chris, you must have seen a different “Smallville.” The one I’ve seen had turned into pure, unadulterated horse crap before it ever left the WB.
I figure somebody finally got the message that the prop house is WAYYYYYY overcrowded. Too much stuff. It’s impossible to find anything! It’s about time they got rid of some stuff. They should take the proceeds and throw a party for the guys who work there.
These props are, as we say in the biz, “shot out.” So, it’s time for them to find a new, more useful and happier home. The money is quite literally chump change to Warners.
“What happened to all the money THE DARK NIGHT raked in? Or are we not supposed to ask? Odd how a studio can brag about how much money they’ve made one minute then turn around …”
This is from an “Executive Communique” we at Warners got from Barry Meyer, saying that some of us (who don’t need to come in to work) will get Dec 26 and Jan 2 as paid days off. Just prior to that it says, “… despite the current tumultuous state of the world’s economy, our company continued to perform solidly in the motion picture, television, home entertainment and consumer product arenas this year …”
I wonder about that, too, “Have to be anon on this one”, because the word we’ve been getting is that the studio is doing well thanks to the massive Batman hit that has made almost a billion dollars. I think this is a pre-emptive cost cutting more than a need to stem losses.
But what do I know, I’m not their accountant.
Garage sale … sweet! Maybe we’ll find London After Midnight in the bargain bin!
As for what they could do to change business strategy … make 50 20 million dollar pictures a year instead of 5 200 million dollar pictures.
They’ve various pieces including a couple of monstrously valuable Tiffany lights that serve no purpose other than to suck up insurance money and be pointed out by the tour guides. Don’t dare use ‘em, can’t rent ‘em out. Which makes them liabilities rather than assets.
They probably spend so much money its sick despite what they make on a film! Wish I could see the garage sale in person. LOL
There was a Herter Brothers piece on an Antique Roadshow episode I happened to watch this last week. Because of that I can feel cool for knowing what Herter Bros is. The piece was a writing desk some guy got for a song and was worth $45K-$50K. It was from one of the large California baron estates.
I worked at WB (film) for a long time, left couple years ago, & they were always talking about selling off some of the props. Gets expensive to store them & studio space is precious. I doubt the economy is having much effect, they had a great year. I literally had no idea when the rest of the country or even the state was in a recession or down economy. In the 90’s I made great money and everyone I knew had a job. Wasn’t until I came into the private sector that I knew what other people went through. Working 10-12 hr days & using weekends to read scripts or screen new talent material makes for a very insulated world. Weird but that’s Hollywood life. My buddies at WB all say they are fine.
The pressure to cut comes from other divisions, corporate in NY and a flat DVD biz. Does not matter how well movie division does. Look at history. Hits never move the stock. On the other hand, WB is pissing away wads of money marketing its films, and the bean-counters have told Robinov and Kroll they are on notice, and people will pay for their profligate spending on ridiculous numbers of TV spots to cover their asses, ego-driven marketing programs and other waste. Stand by. Layoffs soon.
There have been other furniture/prop auctions.
1971 MGM that helped to build MGM Grand Las Vegas and that burned.
Even Mary Todd Lincoln had to sell her furniture after Abraham died! Watch the 1962 tour of the White House with Mrs. Kennedy and you find things out.
MGM was able to make money during the other great depression thanks to Irving Grant Thalberg. Many of the others didn’t fare too well.
There were no unions or fewer unions/guilds at that time.