-40%
DEACCESSIONED MOVIELAND WAX MUSEUM 35mm slide of WAX PEE-WEE HERMAN truly weird
$ 10.03
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Description
This is an original 35mm slide in color of the wax figure of Pee-Wee Herman from the now-defunct Movieland Wax Museum. In original white plastic carrier. Excellent condition.The box was acquired at the Movieland Wax Museum auction, and a printout of the photographs above that show it will be included with this sale. The actual box is not included.
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Pee-wee Herman is a comic fictional character created and portrayed by American comedian Paul Reubens. He is best known for his films and television series during the 1980s. The childlike Pee-wee Herman character developed as a stage act that quickly led to an HBO special in 1981. As the stage performance gained further popularity, Reubens took the character to motion picture with Pee-wee's Big Adventure in 1985, toning down the adult innuendo for the appeal of children. This paved the way for Pee-wee's Playhouse, an Emmy Award-winning children's series that ran on CBS from 1986 to 1991. Another film, Big Top Pee-wee, was released in 1988, and after a lengthy hiatus, a third film, Pee-wee's Big Holiday, was released by Netflix in 2016.
Due to negative media attention following a scandal in 1991, Reubens decided to shelve his alter ego during the 1990s, then gradually resurrected it during the following decade. It was at that time that Reubens addressed plans to write a new Pee-wee film, Pee-wee's Playhouse: The Movie. In June 2007, Reubens appeared as Pee-wee Herman for the first time since 1992 at Spike TV's Guys' Choice Awards.[1]
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Movieland Wax Museum, with over 300 wax figures in 150 sets, was the largest wax museum in the United States. Located in Buena Park, California, it was for decades one of the most popular wax museums in the United States. Allen Parkinson founded the museum on May 4, 1962, but sold it to the Six Flags Corporation in 1970. It was located north of Knott's Berry Farm on Beach Boulevard.
In 1975, Six Flags opened a Movieland Wax Museum clone called "Stars Hall of Fame" in Orlando, Florida, located near the intersection of the State Road 528 Bee-Line Expressway and Interstate 4, close to SeaWorld Orlando and just north of Walt Disney World. However, in 1984 after a drop in attendance, the Florida museum was closed and sold to the publisher Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Having no interest in the museum but an interest in the land alone, Harcourt sold off the exhibits to the American Musical Academy of Arts Association and turned the property into a showroom for the company's educational materials.[1]
On April 1, 1985, the Six Flags Corporation sold the California-based Movieland Wax Museum to Fong & Paul Associates, the owners of the world famous Wax Museum at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. Twenty years later, on October 31, 2005, after forty-three years in business and 10 million visitors, Movieland went away.
In the museum's heyday, several actors and actresses attended the unveilings of their wax likenesses, and even went so far as to donate costumes to be worn by their likenesses, along with sets replicated from well-known movie scenes. Movie themes and sound effects also added to the authenticity of the museum. A movie clapperboard on each set included the name of the wax figures and facts about the movie, props, costume, and the person whom the wax figure was modeled on.
Many of the wax figures and sets from the Movieland Wax Museum were auctioned off in March 2006.[2]
One of the earliest sculptors commissioned by Allen Parkinson to produce these real-sized hyper-realist wax figures in 1960 was the renowned Spanish sculptor Antonio Ballester Vilaseca [es]. He was responsible for the figures of Clark Gable, Leslie Howard, David Niven, Hattie McDaniel, Olivia de Havilland, Natalie Wood, Vivien Leigh, Charlton Heston, Gene Kelly, Robert Stack, as well as the sets Don Quixote and Sancho, Miguel Angel's David, Leonardo da Vinci, and a full-bodied Gioconda.[3]
The former Starlite Gift Shop in front of the museum is now a Starbucks Coffee.
The Starprint Gallery, with handprints and footprints of celebrities in cement, dating from the early 1980s, existed until the original building was demolished in 2016.
The tall tower sign was the tallest sign in Orange County, California. It was removed as of July 30, 2018.
The Movieland Wax Museum property was purchased by the City of Buena Park in May 2007. In 2013 the city leased the property to Premier Exhibitions for display of RMS Titanic relics and its Bodies: The Exhibition.[4]
In October 2016, the main Movieland Wax Museum building was torn down.