![](http://www.syracusenewtimes.com/newyork/file-177-.jpg")
John LeBold’s collection of classic costumes is part of a celluloid-themed New Year’s blast at Turning Stone
They had faces, sure, but they had costumes back then, too. And those Tinseltown togs and tchotchkes are on ample display during the current run of Hollywood, Golden Era and Beyond: Icons of Costume, a marquee-busting title for a gaggle of gowns and gadgets on view at Verona’s Turning Stone Resort and Casino.
A hallway of meeting rooms near the Event Center’s main doors, across from the Tree of Peace Rotunda sculpture, has been given a makeover to house more than 30 famed frocks. The rooms have been retitled, too, in honor of Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Jean Harlow, Barbara Stanwyck and Vivien Leigh. And the Audrey Hepburn Room holds some treasures for the guys, including a baseball bat wielded by Kevin Costner in Bull Durham (1987), the golden idol from Raiders from the Lost Ark (1981) and Bogart’s black bird from The Maltese Falcon (1941). The exhibit should be an essential stop for resort visitors on New Year’s Eve when the Turning Stone throws its Hollywood-themed wingding.
Movie buffs will be in seventh heaven with this crme de la crme collection from longtime curator John LeBold, 72, who worked as a dresser for Academy Award-winning fashion designer Edith Head, who in turn helped LeBold track down the stylish treasures that the movie studios created—and in many cases simply abandoned after their usage. LeBold came to the rescue, however, and Turning Stone visitors now have the chance to be inches away from the checkered dress worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz (1939), get a load of that barrel of the .44 Magnum employed by Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry (1972), and note that aside from James Dean, the actor’s simple yet identifiable attire from Giant (1956) could have been worn by any other 1950s-era rebel without a cause. (Maybe designer Marjorie Best purchased Dean’s Levis from a Texas Woolworth’s.) While some of the mannequins are far from manly (Arnold Schwarzenegger filled out the black jacket duds more effectively for 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day), the female plaster counterparts have an easier time replicating the getups worn by the gals, such as the va-va-va-voom attributes for the gold lame dress worn by Marilyn Monroe for 1953’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
LeBold now calls Brewster, Mass., his home, but he traveled to Verona to supervise the show. And this could be the last chance for locals to savor such cinematic serendipity, since recent news reports indicate that LeBold wants to sell his vast collection in one mega-sizable chunk—which carries a $10 million appraisal—to a museum or educational institution. To be sure, the beginnings of LeBold’s collecting career play like the flashback scenes from Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night (1973), and during his move to the West Coast, he certainly wasn’t discovered at Schwab’s drug store, either. Still, for one Bronx expatriate, Hollywood really was a dream factory.
“I got started because I was a sickly child and I didn’t have any children to play with,” LeBold recalls about his wonder years during the mid-1940s. “I had rheumatic fever, a heart murmur and all that sort of stuff, so nobody wanted to play with me. So I would go to the movies after school. My mother and grandmother raised me—they operated a delicatessen—so they would pick me up after the movies were over and bring me home to do my homework.
“And that’s where I spent most of my time. They were my friends: films. And actually, the theater managers became my surrogate fathers, because my own father could have cared less about me. Very often they’d run out of the theater after the movie was over and say, ‘How did you enjoy the show?’ And I’d say, ‘I loved it!’ Then they’d take their keys {to the display windows that held the promotional materials} and show me the stills and ask ‘Do you like that one?’ And they’d open up the glass and give me a photograph or a poster. And that started me collecting. Well, within a few years I wound up with over 50,000 posters and stills, and this became my whole life.
“The Bronx was a very dangerous area, especially in the 1940s. I wound up with a lot of knife wounds, getting beat up every day, and unfortunate things happened. So eventually my parents sold the delicatessen and, because of my health, we moved to Arizona. But then I couldn’t take it anymore in Arizona: From wearing three-piece suits in the Bronx to going on horseback and being barefoot, with your only companions being Indians and horses, it was a little too strange for me. So I got on a bus and went to Hollywood. I was 15 and by myself, so I got a little hotel room and got some jobs.
“I went to Western Costume—I was 17—and got a job in the costume department, and then I started to collect them. One day I saw this old lady coming down the stairs and I got a little worried about her because she was sort of fumbling and the stairs were very steep and narrow, and I asked if she needed some help. And she got very excited about the fact that I wanted to help her, and she said, “Are you serious?,” and I said yes. So I helped her down the stairs and she handed me her card; it was famous designer Edith Head. And she said, ‘Be at Paramount Studios at 7:30 p.m.’ I became her gofer, and she sent me all over town to fetch things for her. And my life just changed. Eventually I was able to find where the costumes were and I started collecting them. A few years later I opened the Hollywood Motion Picture Museum with some backers at the corner of Hollywood and Sycamore boulevards, just a few blocks from Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.”
It’s not an understatement to cite that LeBold’s decades-long reclamation project actually saved many classic duds from oblivion. “The studios didn’t take care of the costumes,” LeBold says while shaking his head with bitter regret. “The drapery dress from Gone With the Wind (1939), I found it on the floor and people were putting stepladders on top of it to reach up for another costume. I found the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz in a corner with spiders making nests in them. I found all the dresses from Norma Shearer’s 1936 Marie Antoinette—probably the most beautifully costumed movie of all time, the most expensive movie in terms of fashion ever made—all laying on the floor under a wet water drain, all rotting. I’ve seen the most beautiful costume sketches by Adrian—the most important costume designer of all time—and Edith Head with holes made in the centers and put on the wardrobe racks with {the words} Aisle A, Aisle B, Aisle C on the backs.”
Hollywood, Golden Era and Beyond: Icons of Costume runs through Jan. 28, with gallery hours on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, noon to 8 p.m., and Fridays and Saturdays, 1 to 9 p.m. Admission is $6. For exhibit details, call 361-SHOW.
Expect plenty of heavy traffic on Saturday, Dec. 31, when the Turning
Stone turns up the glitter for a show-biz blast. The Event Center will
hold an 8 p.m. red carpet Hollywood dance party with music, celebrity
impersonators imported from Las Vegas, costumed cutups and professional
dancers ($35 for advance tickets, $45 at the door). The Lava Dance Club
features maximum tuneage from DJ Splyce and a midnight light show
(advance tickets are $45 for women and $55 for men; expect to pay $75 at
the door). The Showroom offers an 11 p.m. Vietnamese-themed party for
$25. The High Stakes Bingo parlor offers mood music from Dan Elliott and
the Montereys to accompany the daubers. And there will be the popular
living statues and star-spangled showgirls strutting about the resort to
provide more eye candy for year-end revelers. For details, call
361-SHOW.
