Sunday, March 22, 2009

Delivering the Goods...........Photos at last & more ebay stuff


These are the first 2 of 90+ slides that were scanned and sent back on disc so we're back in business.  I won't know which episode most of these are from so your part of the deal is to play Name That Set.  This was for some party that Higgins had at the estate.  I lucked out with this carousel horse, stuck an umbrella in it and instant overdone centerpiece!  Set dressing was the only department allowed into the house so we could place those chairs up on the 2nd floor lanai  The actual "front door" to the house lead to the lower lanai which then opened into this courtyard or into the other rooms of the house on the right.  The room (bump out) to the left of the door was the "trunk room" since they would only come for the "winter season."  There was an inner hallway off the lanai with the staircase (badly corroded by sea air the last time I saw it).  Those are the 2,000 foot cliffs of Makapu'u next to the estate.  It was a popular hang gliding take-off point and usually greener in the rainy season (whenever that used to be--weather has changed here).  You can see the motor home parked in the distance.  It was always a challenge to get the motor home as close to the set as possible and not have it seen (along with the other production trucks and massive generator).  Often times it was covered with plants (fake or real) and sometimes camouflage net.  Well, not much more to be said about these two.

New Magnum items listed on ebay are:  #190295729912, #190295732049, and #190295733545 and my last 2 "LOST" caps.  Good luck (to me, that is!)

Aloha,  Rick

3 comments:

Marco said...

Awesome - thanks, Rick!

The pictures are from "The Case Of The Red Faced Thespian" from season 4. A very nice and funny episode where Magnum solves the crime in best Agatha Cristie tradition :-)

Anonymous said...

Kind of a strange question here Rick, but since Magnum was well before the Lowes and Home Depot invasion, was there a local hardware store where things like the paneling were usually purchased? Was it part of your job to secure the lowest prices for materials? Given the time factor, did the stores deliver to the studio, or did the company have trucks for picking up larger items? Sorry for the bombardment of questions here, I'm really interested in how the logistics worked. I know you had a limited amount of time to prepare a set, and from that initial script reading until you had a film ready set, I was wondering how it all came together. By the way, one more question (sorry) Do you own the DVDs, and if so can you immediately recognize your sets in them?
Thanks,
Mike

Magnum Decorator said...

Construction materials for set building was all the domain of the Art Department (design) and Construction (build). Molding and trim came from Universal Studios on the mainland. Hardware and smaller things came from Kaimuki Ace Hardware nearby. City Mill is the local lumber/hardware chain and still in existence, but other local suppliers were put out of their misery by Home Depot and Lowe's. Construction had their own truck for pick-ups. They tended not to stock too much lumber ahead since there was little room to build anyway and each show had its own budget.
I did buy one season of Magnum but only made it through a few episodes. When it used to come on TV here (ironically it's not on here at all), if I watched the show I would try and guess if I had even done that episode or not. Invariably I would guess wrong! I have done well over 300 + hours of episodic TV shows and I rarely even watch network TV so watching re-runs like Norma Desmond (or Norm Desmond the decorator??) just isn't me.
Nostalgia just isn't what it used to be, I guess. :-)

Aloha, Rick