USS Angeles

Editor’s note: This story originally appeared in the March edition of Angels Flight, the USS Angeles’ newsletter. The Region 4 website welcomes articles and photos from all chapters. You can submit them to Chief of Communications Dave Mason at davemason1701@gmail.com.

By Commodore Dave Mason

LOS ANGELES — Jeremy Kranz and I found the Oscars.

We discovered the statues that the winners held. They were behind glass in a small gallery at the mammoth Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, a four-story building across the street from a site of previous USS Angeles away missions: the Petersen Automotive Museum on Los Angeles’ Miracle Mile. 

It was the USS Angeles’ first visit to the Academy Museum, which opened in 2021 in the former May Co. building on Wilshire Boulevard. Jeremy and I found countless treasures from Hollywood’s past and present at the museum, which was featured in a brief segment on the March 2 Oscars telecast on ABC.

During our Feb. 1 mission, Jeremy and I discovered treasures such as Sam’s golden yellow piano with a flowery design from the 1942 black-and-white film “Casablanca.” This little upright piano, by the way, has just 58 keys. Pianos usually have 88.

Dooley Wilson, the actor and singer who portrayed Sam, had great musical skills, but he was a drummer, not a pianist. So he only pretended to play, and the actual piano heard in the song “As Time Goes By” was played off-camera by either Elliot Carpenter or Jean Plummer and added to the soundtrack. But it is Wilson singing.

By the way, Rick (Humphrey Bogart) never said, “Play it again, Sam.” 

He said, “Play it!” 

Earlier in the film, Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) asks Sam, “Play it once, Sam. For old times’ sake.”

Elsewhere at the museum, Jeremy and I journeyed into the future. We saw the models from sci-fi movies such as the spaceships from “Interstellar” (2014). I was excited to see the model that was used as a spherical shuttle on the moon in “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968). This “miniature” is large enough that one person can’t lift it without help.

The “2001” model is a rare treasure, given that director Stanley Kubrick ordered the destruction of all the models, props and blueprints to prevent their re-use in other directors’ films.

And Jeremy and I enjoyed sitting down and watching clips from different sci-fi movies, everything from “The Day the Earth Stood Still” to the “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” films, play around us on a 180-degree screen. 

The museum’s futuristic exhibits extended to its “Cyberpunk: Envisioning Possible Futures Through Cinema” exhibit, which focused on movies such as two classics from 1982, “Blade Runner” and “Tron.” A section on the “Terminator” movies featured sketches used in planning the look of Arnold Schwarzenegger as an android with some of his skin exposed.

The exhibit also explored later films such as  “Alita: Battle Angel” (2019). The title character of “Alita” was played by Rosa Salazar, who portrayed Capt. Lynne Lucero in the Tribble-inspired “Star Trek” short “The Trouble with Edward,” also from 2019.

Other exhibits explored the histories of animation, Los Angeles filmmaking, the use of color and, of course, the Oscars.

One large room was dedicated to a timeline for the Academy Awards, from the ceremony’s beginning on May 16, 1929 at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood to its current home across Hollywood Boulevard and just down the block at the Dolby Theater. 

Visitors in the Oscars timeline room walked around a giant table as they followed the history. Behind visitors was one long wall covered by videos of acceptance speeches. The videos were magically turned on, one grateful speech at a time.

Nearby exhibits were devoted to movies such as “Boyz N The Hood” (1991), which starred Cuba Gooding Jr., Ice Cube, Morris Chestnut (now starring as the title character of CBS’ “Watson”) and Laurence Fishburne.

Next to that area was an exhibit devoted entirely to Lourdes Portillo, a filmmaker known for her poignant documentaries about Latin America and social justice. The exhibit, which includes a Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) altar, tells the story of the Chihuahua, Mexico native, who grew up in Los Angeles and went on to create films such as “Las Madres: The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo” (1985), “La Ofrenda: The Days of the Dead” (1988) and “Señorita Extraviada/Missing Young Woman” (2001).  

Elsewhere, Jeremy and I entered the animation exhibit, which takes up an entire floor. The exhibit begins with a large room where families watch movies varying from the latest Disney movies to the 1914 animated black-and-white short “Gertie the Dinosaur.”

Another room in the exhibit shows models, such as one created for the robotic title character of Disney/Pixar’s “WALL-E” (2008). Animators often use physical models as a guide to creating drawings or, as in the case of “WALL-E,” computer-generated images.

One area was devoted to “Skeleton Dance,” one of Disney’s Silly Symphonies, which were cartoon shorts without dialogue and set entirely to music. The exhibit featured a screening of “Skeleton Dance” and the sheet music. Near it was the actual xylophone, consisting of windpipes, that was used for the music that accompanied an animated skeleton playing the bones of another skeleton’s back as if they were a xylophone.

Jeremy and I also learned about movie history in “Hollywoodland: Jewish Founders and the Making of a Movie Capital,” about the Los Angeles studios, including Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Columbia, Universal, MGM and Paramount. The exhibit shows how the major studios started and takes an honest look at the antisemitism that the industry’s founders faced.

Jeremy and I also explored “Color In Motion: Chromatic Explorations of Cinema.” The exhibit covered the history of color, beginning with its earliest use when colors were hand-painted directly onto film. 

The exhibit featured colorful costumes such as the green dress that Kim Novak wore in the 1958 Alfred Hitchcock classic “Vertigo” and classic technology such as early Technicolor cameras.

In one of the museum’s interactive segments, Jeremy and I waved our hands to control a projection of colors in motions. There was some applause from spectators as we and others made the colors move dramatically.

As we went through the museum, we stumbled upon a beautiful prop from one of my favorite comedies, “The Great Race” (1965).  It was the crown designated for Crown Prince Fredrick Hopenick’s coronation. Jack Lemmon played both the prince and the villain who impersonated him, the wicked Professor Fate. 

It was among the countless treasures in a museum that made me feel like singing the song, “Hooray for Hollywood.”

Jeremy Kranz stands in front of a scene of Marilyn Monroe in the 1956 blockbuster “Gentleman Prefer Blondes” on Feb. 1, 2025, at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. The image promoted the Los Angeles museum’s exhibit on the use of color in movies. (Photo by Dave Mason/USS Angeles/Angels Flight)

A model from”2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968) stands Feb. 1, 2025, at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. This miniature was filmed as one of the shuttle that lands on the moon. (Photo by Dave Mason/USS Angeles/Angels Flight)

Brilliant costumes from a movie made in India grace the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures’ exhibit on the use of color in movies. (Photo by Dave Mason/USS Angeles/Angels Flight)

Dave Mason visits the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Feb. 1, 2025. (Photo by Jeremy Kranz/USS Angeles/Angels Flight)

The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures stands in the renovated May Co. building at Fairfax Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. (Photo by Dave Mason/USS Angeles/Angels Flight)