In February of 2011, Concord, California camera collector John Bolin took a tour of Hollywood’s top ”prop’ house, History For Hire. By taking his camera, he took us all on tour with him. John sent me over 100 photos of his visit, but I’ve included only about thirty here because the place is so huge, even John’s 100 plus images can’t do it justice so I’ve chosen only the ones that have cameras in them, and not even all of them. There are nearly 1000 microphones that cover every era, different size cranes and dollies, pan heads and peds galore and even a few Mole Richardson perambulators (sound booms).

Basically, if you can name it, History For Hire has it buy the hundreds, and if not, they can make an exact duplicate…even cigarette packages and bottle labels. Got a war scene? Pick a war, and they can outfit your armies…they even have replicas of “Fat Man” and “Little Boy”, the atomic bombs used in World War II.

Below right is John and his wife at KRTH radio where they had gone to visit a friend…afternoon driver, Shotgun Tom Kelly (with hat). It was a busy trip for the Bolins because they had gone down to Los Angeles to pick up a TK47 (new add to his collection) from my old friend Manny Rodriguez whom I met at ABC in New York in the late 1980s. For a long time, Manny was the director of the “Ellen DeGeneres Show” , but is now directing the CBS mid day show “The Talk”. They went to the taping of The Talk. Later that day, they went to the taping of The Conan Show and visited our friend Bruce Oldham who is on camera three. Bruce and John went to school together.

Above left is History For Hire owner, Jim Elyea. Chuck Pharis has helped Jim collect and reengineer cameras over the years and told me stories of how big the place was. Jim and I became friends last year when I helped him acquire 3 pristine Vinten Fulmar pedestals from Singapore. A collector there had short circuited their trip to the salvage yard and need help in finding them a new home. They have a new life in Hollywood now, and at this writing, the 3 peds are being used in the new Muppet Movie.

Before I lay out all the shots below with just a few comments on them, I’ve got to show you a very neat trick. I think Chuck Pharis taught Jim how to do this when they were building the three prop cameras used in American Dreams, which was a TV series that revolved around the early days of American Bandstand. You can see them below in a few pictures.

Since there are basically no working cameras from these early eras, they have to look like they are working, so all the old insides are taken out the real cameras, but saved for parts for collectors. That means little flat panel LCD screens for the view finder, and to make the illusion complete, not one, but four little lipstick cameras with different focal lengths, to imitate the different lenses on the turret that changes in the viewfinder when you rack the lenses to a new position.

Look carefully at the photo above. First, this is NOT a real TK30. All of Jim’s other cameras are real, but oddly, he has no real TK30s, so he had to make some, but that’s not why I’m showing you this.

See the small box under the lens turret on the bottom of the camera? It’s very non descript and looks like it could be one of the many modifications made to these cameras. Now…look below. The front of the box is open and shows the four small lipstick camera lenses that feed a picture to the LCD viewfinder screen and even to monitors in a control room if that is what’s called for. When the turret turns, there is a mechanism inside the hollow camera body that changes which lipstick lens is ”taking’ the shot. All of his cameras have this capability. Cool!

OK…here we go…enjoy!

These 3 TK41s above are from CBS and have the lipstick cameras, too…all the cameras have them, even the TK42s below.

WOW! Camera Row!

Above, are the cameras built for “American Dream” , and again below behind a real TK10

 Above, a real TK10 and below, a real good copy of a TK30 on a Panoram dolly

Believe it or not, this is a History for Hire built 1950s control room console, and it works.

Above, John’s friend Bob Snyder on Camera Row with TK60s, below, Norelcos!

Above I see an Ikegami 323, TK44s and Howdy Doody? Below is one of their TK46s.

Below are Ampex mono tape recorders…a sight near and dear to my heart. This is what I used in my first days in radio in 1964. I’m still a great audio editor and these machines are one of the reasons why…it’s where I learned to splice and edit.