If Hollywood Wants It, Hinds Has It

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 86, 12 April 1941, Page 21 (Supplement)

If Hollywood Wants It, Hinds Has It

Wuh t° la ,' e u C "' O.J I clo,hin S s <°"= in Oshkosh, Wis., and embarked on mot,on pictures for a career he took with him an office bov who was to become Hollywood's greatest trader in horseflesh, old coins, antique furniture, elephants, ship models, leather goods, cockroaches or you-name-its. After 21 roars, Jack Hinds is still re,lti »-' it or making it, hut tho f ""' 1,0 lina largely disappeared from "prop-' rentals. The good ° <! ;'- VS of l"W"ng, when a merchant added ~0 per cent as soon as he mw a film studio representative coming and then fully expected to spend a delightful

By John Woolfenben

hour or two arguing back and forth until a compromise was reached, are gone forever. Xow there's a standard price for everv'"'j-', least in Los Angeles, and Jiiiv.ls only consideration is the length o time that a ]>roduetion unit mav want to use some gadget, and whether it \w,uid lve cheaper to l.uv it or rent it. When he first arrived at the old imersal Studios he had never driven a ear. hut spent an hour on the hack "t teaching himself, by trial and error, how to manoeuvre one of those hnrseIWi Then he drove down town l"'-k up his lirst order, his only mishap being that lie ran over the feet <>t the tradic cop at Third and Broadway.

w Since then Hinds has become a valued customer of virtually every Los Angeles department store and antique shop. There i< a group of shops on Los I'cliz Boulevard, between Riverside Drive and Brand Boulevard, in Glendale, which he haunts repularlv. Furniture <loct>n t interest him particularly, because his present employer, Metro-Goldwyn-Maver, owns one of'the finest coTlections of period furniture in tile country, but period gadgets of any other description, such at? a Uarcrreave spinning wheel and loom, or a revolving fan driven by an alcohol lamp, will warm his heart for days. . -the Pony Lxpress Museum at Arcadia is another of J i its. favourite browsing spots. While others examine the form charts at. Santa Anita, just across the tracks, Hinds checks over an old handdrawn fire apparatus and pigeonholes it in his mental file for future reference. Any news story in the daily papers that may offer a clue to some article which a film company may need. Hinds clips and files. Recently he needed two British gas masks. He applied to a plane manufacturing plant which he knew owned some of the needed masks, but red tape prevented their licing loaned. But on a front page a few days previously had been a two-column picture of two young British refugees who had arrived in town proudlv carrying two such masks. Hinds tracked down" their phone number, borrowed the trophies. His Toughest Job! The toughest job lie ever undertook was to find the mosquitoes for "Yellow Jack." Out of season in California, tiiev could not be imported from other States because of Department of Agriculture regulations. But on a duckhunting expedition to Oalipatria, near the border, Hinds saw the larvae in thick clustres, brought specimens home and hatched them out by means of a hot-water incubator. T 5?„ S ra , ssll "l'Pers for "The Good Jl-arth he bought from a local fish-bait supply house. The monster trout for "Libelled Lady" was rented from a San Bernardino hatchery, where it fras kept for breeding purposes, and was brought to the studio in a specially aerated tank.

Two army tanks for "The Big House" were borrowed from the California National Guard and brought from Salinas to Culver City on flatcars. Two tiny frogs needed for '"Of Human Hearts" were found while he was picnicking with hie wife on Topanga Canyon, and after much fruitless digging in other creeks and phone calls to frog farms. More recently an entire carnival and its sideshows were needed for the opening sequence of "Maisic Was a Lady," in which Ann Sotliern appears as the "headless woman." Through the United Tent and Awning Company Hinds discovered a small carnival about to wind up the season in a northern California town and put its tents and "props" in storage. n<- made a deal for the entire outfit, hag and baggage, but still needed a headless woman apparatus such as had been on display at the Xew York and San Francisco Fairs. A Los Angeles magic supply house made one on order. Acres of "Props" To meet the budgets of short subjects and '"B' features Hinds frankly tells his merchants that he cannot pay the top prices which an "A" budget might cover. Invariably he is able to make a deal. It might 6eem that, over a period of years, he has accumulated an unconscionable amount of this and that around the studio. He has. Except for six carloads of furniture, which were auctioned off a year or two ago, nothing wh T ch he has bought in the Ifij-t 14 years at has ever been sold a .train. But even M-O-M-'s ISO acres are beginning to bulge a littie around the edges, where Hinds has stacked his props. He's on call 24 hours a day, with the phono likely to ring at any hour of the night with a call from sonic director who suddenly remembered that it would l>o a good idea to have an aquarium three calliopes and a stuffed alligator on Wage 14 at 8 a.m. If Hinds dosen't have them he usually knows where lie can get them, even at that hour. But, having made a couple of phone calls himself he immediately puts the matter out of his mind, rolls over and goes back to sleep.