Going underground for a best seller

Press, 7 June 1980, Page 15

Going underground for a best seller

From

KEN COATES

in London

Beneath London’s famous Palladium Theatre, in what were once the vast cellars of the town houses of the Dukes of Argyll and Marlborough, a $2.3M tourist attraction has been opened. Modern technology animates more than 115 lifesized figures from film, television, and theatre history. With the aid of 13 sound svstems, each costing $5OOO, and a clever device whereby film of a speaker’s face is projected into an inanimate model’s head, the figures are made as lifelike as possible. Dr Jekyll changes into his sinister counterpart, Mr Hyde; the actor, Yul Brynner, who is actually playing at present in the long-running “The King and I” at the Palladium, appears to speak. The creators of the exhibition, which faces stiff competition from the long-established Madame

Tussaud’s waxworks (at $4 admission, the Palladium Cellars are 20 cents cheaper), have produced sculpted models from fibreglass. Many have flexible joints that enable them to move electrically, hydraulically, or simply by means of compressed air.

A ghoulish Frankenstein slowly sits up in a bizarre workroom as he is charged with electricity; a sinister Count Dracula buries his fangs into his victim’s neck while “blood” drips slowly from the fingertips of a lifeless corpse. Kirk Douglas wields a cutlass from the swaying deck of a pirates galleon; and John Wayne laconically takes a drink in a Wild West saloon. At the head of the empire of which the Palladium Cellars is now a part is Lord Grade, whose reputation was built on backing only profitable

ventures. The subterranean exhibition is seen as an extension of the theatre and the same high standards are insisted upon. Everything had to look realistic and authentic. Thousands of movie stills, portraits, and reference books were consulted after planning began five years ago. Mr Monty Berman, head of Bermans and

Nathans, the world renowned theatrical costumiers (now part of the Lord Grade group), was consulted. The famous firm not only manufactured all the figures in its Campden Town workshop, but devised the sophisticated mechanics and fashioned the costumes. More than 2000 yards of material, enough to make 600 two-

piece suits for the average man, were used. The motivation was to present, for example, a tableau from “Oliver” in which the ragged urchin looks as though he would pick a pocket or two, and a scene from Macbeth which would look as realistic as any stage or film set. With the theatre and

films to draw on, the cellar displays cover a wide gamut — from Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street, and Jack the Ripper, to the stars of the flickering days of silent movies, Valentino and Mary Pickford. The key man behind the venture is Michael Carreras, who has had 30 years experience in filmmaking. He worked on

many of the classic horror movies with Hammer Films, which was headed by his father, Sir James Carreras. Some of these featured Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr Jekyll, the Mummy and th; Werewolf — all of which are presented in the cellars. “We aim to entertain, but also we pay a tribute to all entertainers who have used the streets, the stage, the cinema screen, and the TV screen, to present their talents to the public,” he says. The great names are all there — Bogart, Wayne;' Redford, Newman, Laurel and Hardy, Flynn, Crosby, Hope, Sinatra, Cagney, Brando and so on.

There is a simulated Hollywood shoot-out from the Bonnie and Clyde era. Acknowledging the phenomenal success of recent Star Wars-type films, there is a futuristic manned space capsule, complete with taped space jar-

gon, flashing computers, and robots.

As the tourists troop through the cellars, a brash souvenir shop invites them to pay a ri-diculously-high $9 for a Marilyn Monroe T-shirt, or $6 for a Laurel and Hardy poster. It is estimated it will take at least two years before the attraction becomes part of the tourist circuit. While there has been no attempt to' cash in on the successful American idea of trans- -1 porting visitors _ through exhibitions and involving them to the full in Disneyland style, the cellars have made an effort to be authentic. One man was employed to rub with sandpaper and saddlesoap every day, including Sundays, for a month, in order to make new costumes in the Western set look suitably worn.