Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - Mini #190: Collecting TV Treasures with James Comisar

Episode Date: November 15, 2018

This week: Remembering Forrest Ackerman! Authenticating the Batmobile! Steven Spielberg buys Rosebud! Marty Krofft drives a hard bargain! And James tries to create a Museum of Television! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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one two one two two two two two two two two two two two two two I'm here with my co-host, Frank Santopadre, and this is Gilbert and Frank's Amazing Colossal Obsessions. It is.

Colossal Obsessions. And I brought you a guest this week. Oh, yeah? Yes. Finally, you do something. I brought you a man after your own heart, a fellow lover of nostalgia and old movies and old TV, and he collects stuff. nostalgia and old movies and old TV, and he collects stuff.

I was looking through it. The stuff you sent me that he has. He is the master collector, James Commissar. Hi, guys. Hey, Gilbert Frank. Hi, James. What's going on? Thanks for doing this, man. You have Maxwell Smart's shoe phone. Among other

things. Oh, it just starts there. I have the cone of silence. I have his ice cream cone phone, cheese sandwich phone, bar of shoe phone. Among other things. Oh, it just starts there. I have the cone of silence. I have his ice cream cone phone, cheese sandwich phone, bar of soap phone. It just goes on and on. Incredible. Hey, Gilbert, what was your favorite show growing up? Oh, God. Well, Get Smart was one of those.

The Fugitive. You like the Twilight Zone? Twilight Zone, of course. Love the Twilight Zone. Bilko. Car 54, where are you? We're Andy Griffith Show, guys. We know you have Barney Fife's hat, don't you?

Or you did. I have Andy and Barney's badges, uniforms, and hats. For my money, Andy Griffith Show, best classic TV show of all time. What do you think about that? Wow, I almost can't disagree with you. It's a perfect show. It is a perfect show, especially those the Don Knotts seasons.

Right? On for five years, Emmy five years in a row. Do you have the bullet that Don Knotts carried around this pocket? That was a real prop. Let me just say this. I'd pay five grand for that all day long are you

serious absolutely so you say get smart which is one of the best shows of all time sure so if you had the shoe phone from get smart 60 to 80 000 with auction house commission we'd be right at 100 000 how many of those do you want gilez. Wow. I didn't like the show that much. Yeah, the only thing Gilbert really has, you don't have many collectibles. No. You do have the masks. I've got the life masks.

He's got life masks of Lugosi and Chaney Jr. And Bela Lugosi. But he's far too, what's the word? Cheap. To play in your sandbox, James. Well, when I started in my sandbox, you know, 30 years ago, the studios were throwing this stuff out. It was just a storage problem for them. Amazing.

And if you went in with a truck and said, yeah, I'll take that stuff, they would just bloody well give it to you. And now, you know, we have pieces in this art market going for upwards of five million dollars when you started in the 80s and i've heard i heard an interview with you that's this market didn't really exist not to what it is today there were some oddball collectors and some people scattered here or there but there was no real robust collectors market i have been credited with starting this this TV memorabilia market because I grew up with, you know, Keith Partridge and Hawkeye Pierce. What did I know from Judy Garland or John Wayne?

Hawkeye Pierce was just here. Oh, yeah. We just interviewed Alan Alda. Alan Alda just walked out of the room. Did he leave anything? Did he leave any roses? I got his coffee cup here. I'll take it.

Sold. He said, do you want the tent that we slept in? And I said, no, I don't know what to do with that. Did you say, did you say taint? What did you say? It's a tent. Oh, I'm sorry. But go back.

You were credited with starting it. So I was like in my 20s and I grew up a fat kid. So no Little League. I came home and watched TV and these characters this is going to sound so gay these characters were like my after school friends right? So

when I I started writing jokes right out of high school Yeah tell us about that Yeah But you know when I when I found out

these pieces were just being treated poorly I thought I gotta I gotta do this this is going to be my mission and I filled up my whole closet

I filled up my garage. Then I filled up 10 storage units. And here we are today, more TV treasures than even the Smithsonian by far. Incredible. Name just the stuff you have from Wizard of Oz. So I actually started out as a Wizard of Oz collector. When I started, I thought that's my favorite movie.

I'm gonna buy a few things. So, I'll just tell you the best thing I ever had, which is actually the best costume I've ever seen in 30 years. I owned and conserved that Cowardly Lion costume from the Wizard of Oz. Oh, man! It was made out of a real lion.

I mean, this was a big, stinky, 60-pound heavy costume. I was just a kid when I found it. I had to borrow the money. I was taking cash advances off my diner's club card. And I thought, you know what? I'm going to take this to the L.A. County Museum of Art and have them fix it. And there was a conservator there who I could pay monthly on my credit card.

And so the L.A. County Museum of Art conserved it. It was worth near nothing. And on November 24th of 2014, the Cowardly Lion costume sold for $3.1 million. Oh. Gilbert, you got to get in this game. I know. That's walking around money for you, Gilbert. But for the rest of us, that's a lot of money.

That's amazing. That's incredible. So, you know, in the early days, you could buy a Captain Kirk velour tunic from the first season for $200. Nowadays, they're $100,000 plus, and I can just see in the future where two, three, four years in the future, those will be a million bucks.

What made it explode like that? Was it the internet? Was it Comic-Cons and conventions? I think that all adds to it. And of course, with these TV shows streaming through our lives 24-7, that doesn't hurt anything. But I think that people have these incredibly strong relationships

with TV actors and TV characters. And they almost feel like members of the extent of your extended family so when you have an opportunity to buy something that they wore or handled it's like wow it's too good to be true and and we have stuff in our marketplace from five dollars to five million dollars now is it spielberg who owns the sled from Citizen Kane? That's what I... Absolutely right. Yep, absolutely right, Gilbert. He has it and quite a few other pieces.

He is, from what I know, exclusively focused on motion pictures, whereas my love is TV. We cover 70 years of TV. I know you guys like esoteric getting into the weeds on television. And, you know, the big... My publicist is back here, Jeff Abraham, who's also a scholar on comedy. And so I call him all the time just to ask him if something I'm being offered, does anybody care anymore? So I'll call him and I'll just say two words, Ernie Koufax. And he'll say yeah, you gotta get it. And I'm like, does anybody remember?

Am I buying something that's going to, is this a brand or a character that's going to be invisible five years from now? So, unfortunately, one has to think in terms of which of these brands is going to stick. You try to make a living too. How much would that sled be worth right now? Hmm. That's a good question. I would think it's certainly in the million to two million range. Citizen Kane is a great film as far as an entertainment, as far as a collectible film.

Not the sexiest film. But that item. And it depends on whether you have the one that was the hero or they made some up out of balsa wood that just burned at the end of the film. So is it an extra one they didn't get around to burning or is it the one featured in the film? In our art market,

that makes all the difference. So even though you were seeking out Wizard of Oz stuff early on in the game, you were not a features guy. You were a TV guy. I know you have a fondness for Sid and Marty Croft. We had them here, by the way. Have you met Sid and Marty?

Oh, my God. Unfortunately, I haven't met Marty. Yes. Oh, my gosh. Okay, I got to tell you a Marty story then. So, you know, I'm of that age

where I grew up watching Puffin stuff. That was pretty much 69 to 70. And if you grew up my age that was like your Mickey Mouse that was the guy and so Marty called me to his office one day which

was some big estate out here in Hancock Park and I come in and he gives me a lecture that he wants to sell some of his stuff and he said how much do you think it's worth so he walked me through it and I go I don't know 60, $60,000, $70,000. He goes, I got to get a million. And then he tells me.

The Sid and Marty liquidation sale. And so he says to me, oh, my God. So he says to me, he goes, you see that? Hey, kid, you see that filing cabinet? Puffin Stuff's original head used to sit on that file cabinet until my dog got it down and chewed it up. Isn't that a funny story? That's Marty.

Oh, my God. Every time I bought from him, a number of times, every single time I bought from him, on the phone, in the car, on the way over, I'd get a call. Hey, Jimmy, it's Marty. I got to get an extra five grand or the deal is off. He's a hustler. Oh, he's a great hustler i wish when we had them on the podcast that we had them on film too because one of them would be like happy about

everything sid was sid was gleeful oh it was just uh a joy with all the crowds around and then he'd go that wasn't like that at all. You want to hear what really happened? They're the real Sunshine Boys. It's the world according to Marty. So I heard from the costume designer on these shows that Sid was the idea guy. And he would come in on Monday morning

and say, I want to do a tribute to Soup and Crackers. I want to do a musical tribute. And Marty would say, That's an ass, Sid. That's an ass. You're such a Sid and Marty Croft guy. Do you have any props from Pink Lady and Jeff? Oh, my God.

Don't even say it. I heard... I would buy it. I mean, I would buy it and I'd invite you over because we'd be the only two that remember it. I heard a story that one of the guys that did the voices for the characters, invite you over because we'd be the only two that remember i heard a story that one of the guys that did the voices for the characters his father had been shot the night before and and so so the guy

was of course upset and he wasn't doing as great a job your your fucking father was shot. And Marty wanted to fire him. And Sid said, but Marty, we can't fire him. His father was just killed. And Marty goes, we didn't shoot him, Sid. That's Marty.

But man, when he dies dies That's going to be Some funeral They're wonderful Ceremony I mean everybody's Got a Marty's You have more TV stuff Than the Smithsonian

Do you still Or you had at one point Oh no I still have I have thousands And thousands of these objects It's incredible From really every era Of television

Throw me a show And I'll tell you what I have Well we were talking About Star Trek I know you got star trek stuff okay so star trek i probably have 40 50 costumes you know the bridge tunics are amazing but those visiting guest starring aliens those were the beautiful costumes they made they only had the budget to make one for each actor and if you spilled on it or you got makeup on it they

would just stop filming they wasn't it's not now where you back it up six times. So some of those are visually beautiful. William Ware Tice was the costume designer and he created these amazing alien costumes that were sort of sexy psychedelic versions of what he thought an alien would be. And they're amazing. So Star Trek, if you wanted like a Klingon gun, a Klingon disruptor, that cost you 30 to 50 large.

If you wanted Spock's ear tips, 250,000 if it's from the original show. It's really, the issue is, guys, that you have ultra high net worth guys. You have internet billionaires bidding against the top movie makers. Even celebrities. You have Charlie Sheen buying a World Series baseball for whatever the hell he paid for it a couple of years ago. Four or five million bucks. Who was it? Was it Nicolas Cage who bought a T-Rex skeleton?

Let us just say that Nick Cage has a diverse palette for collecting, let's say. Here's one Gilbert will love, is you have Hervé Villachez's tattoo outfit from Fantasy Island? I not only have his outfit, but I have his little

jeep that he would tool around Fantastic. Oh, gosh. Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, those kinds of pieces are just have his outfit but i have his little jeep that he would he would tool around fantastic oh gosh yeah it's amazing i mean that those kinds of pieces are just amazing at the end of the series you know he wanted a raise they said no so he wasn't in the final season of the show but he said i'm taking home my fucking cart and i'm not coming back so he took the cart home and sadly after he passed away his girlfriend i guess had it all up for sale at butterfields in los angeles and i bought everything i thought what an incredible did she have any idea of what to charge for that well if you've ever gone to auction you know you bring something in

and they want to downgrade your expectations immediately you know if it's worth 10 000 they're going to say well let's put it in at 8 to 1200 and see what happens so she was probably told that it was worth little and it went for more so she's happy but um you know i would say his his island jeep that must be that must be 40 to 60 thousand dollars i would say and you were saying about like the outfits if one was there's that classic story with the outer limits of some actor in this weird alien outfit i think he tripped and fell and it ruined the outfit so they had to change the entire ending because they couldn't fix the outfit again that sounds right i think they put in a gunshot hey we will return to gilbert gottfried's amazing

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disney plus in season three car me and his crew are aiming for the ultimate restaurant accolade a michelin star with golden globe and emmy wins the show starring jeremy allen white What about my favorite show from when I was a kid, James Batman? Jeff told me on the phone you got a couple of goodies. Yeah. Oh, James Batman. Jeff told me on the phone you got a couple of goodies. Oh, a couple. So that's like the Star Trek and classic Batman. That's the gold standard of television memorabilia. So not too many years ago, the Batmobile

sold for $4.6 million. I suspect today it would be closer to $10 million. One of those things that George Barris wound up making? Well, George Barris was a little bit like Marty Kroc. Sure it was show used. Sure it was. So there was one hero and there was sort of a backup.

And then that sort of did car shows on the weekend. And for some reason, 30 years later, now there's six of them. But I think they're replicas. In our business, it's critical that Adam West's ass was in that seat. So a car show backup is not what fans are going to pay the big money for. But I have, we'll talk a little bit about this auction I'm doing. Yeah, tell us about it. Prop Store.

So PropStore.com is this interesting company that started in London about 25 years ago. Stephen Lane was the gent and he had some extra money and he wanted to buy some original Star Wars memorabilia. But it was like the Wild West back then. You couldn't find something that was bona fide authentic. You didn't know who to go to. You didn't know how much to pay for it. So Stephen Lane started that business 25 years ago, and he's now the go-to guy for Hollywood memorabilia. And they have a company in London as well as Los Angeles.

Brandon Allinger runs that company. And so I thought, you know what? I've been doing this 30 years, guys, and I've been waiting for these Hollywoodllywood stakeholders to get behind a tv museum you know it's like debbie reynolds story i've done all the hard work i've done all the heavy lifting i have all the pieces you're to be admired for that you and debbie reynolds okay well debbie reynolds i've always put you in the same category as me too yeah well you you both tried to get hollywood museums and a proper home for this stuff.

It's just amazing. You know, Hollywood considers this stuff to be what they call recoverable assets. It's like a fax machine or a lamp. They don't care anything about it. Even the studios that have archives, they don't care about their history. They just want to have stuff that they can put on display in movie lobbies or when they do the merch rollout. They want to make sure they have stuff to give away. It's just amazing how little they care about their history, which is great because a little Jew like me got in and got it all.

That was a Walt Disney film, a little Jew like me. That's a great one. Marvin Kaplan. The voice. Oh, I was saying one of the dopiest collectibles someone just gave me was like a photo of like Lugosi and a little black piece of fabric. Oh, that's supposedly from the cape? Yeah, that they said they took

bale legosi's dracula cape and cut it up into thousands of little pieces and i'm thinking wouldn't the cape all together be more valuable well how do you even authenticate those things james well that's that's. I mean, how do you? But yeah, some people think that the breakup value of cutting something into a thousand pieces is the way to go,

which of course is a cultural crime. And there's no way to document that that crumb of a cape was worn by anybody. And maybe that's why they're cutting it up

in the first place. But yeah, there are people who have in the past done that. Not so much now. The stuff is so high value, you wouldn't take a pair of scissors to anything. What else do you have from Batman?

As long as we're on the subject, because I don't want to lose that thread. You have a Riddler, Frank Borshman's costume. So, propstore.com, we're having an auction on December 1st, and the Bat Shield is going to be in the auction. So, in the mid-60s, they had one hand prop

and that was it. And if you broke it, they glued it back together. And there was one bat shield used in the first and second season. It says bat shield right across the center.

It's as good as it can get. The colors are vibrant. There's no cracks. We're thinking four to six hundred thousand. I'm working three jobs, Gilbert, and I can't afford a bat shield. Can I afford a batarang, James?

Okay. Anything from Twilight Zone are at a limit. Okay, so the first and only piece I have ever seen from the Twilight Zone is, do you remember there was an episode called Eye of the Beholder?

Where there's the pretty woman and she comes out of the bandages. The famous one. Yeah. She's hoping that her... So in the same auction, December 1st, PropStore.com, we're selling the actual makeup that they wore in that episode. And that was done by a very well makeup artist William Tuttle William Tuttle

very famous and so I think War of the Worlds I think he did that right before the show did he do Time Machine also

I believe so yeah I think you're right so something like that is I think it's in at six to eight thousand dollars it was in the collection you guys probably know

the name we're familiar with Forry Ackerman okay now there's a lot of talk like what happened to all of forry ackerman stuff well so you know forry was this lovely kind of innocent beautiful guy and he'd let people come over and they'd say hey man can we take that kon Disruptor and I just want to make a mold of it and I'll bring

you back the original. And Farre was, yeah, yeah, sure, sure. So of course, they would make a duplicate, paint it up real nice, and then give that back to Farre to keep the original. Oy, gewalt. So, you know, he was victimized. Well, I know Kirk Hammett, our friend Kirk Hammett

bought some of those paintings, the Basil Gogo stuff from Fari. And I heard some people didn't even ask. Priceless. They would just like... Bomb stuff? Yeah, they'd just slip it into their bag. True story.

I mean, he would just let you walk around. I mean, if you're in my warehouse, there's 15 cameras going. He would just let people walk around, and he to answer a call or go to the bathroom and you know 20 minutes later that person and some one of his pieces was out the door so yeah that's a that's a sad story but he's you know of course well remembered and honored as a as a as a brilliant writer and also as an archivist so the fact that this makeup also came through his collection is sort of value added. It's even more important. And he actually had a Dracula cape, not a little shitty piece of black fabric.

What's the – two questions, James. Does the sale mean for the most part that you've given up the ghost on seeing any of this stuff in a museum? No, it doesn't. In fact, I've underestimated how stupid Hollywood is. So I thought in 20 years of going to the heads of studios and the heads of theme parks and the heads of casinos saying, look, guys, we have 70 years of history. Every one of these pieces is an attractor that will bring people through the door.

Let's do it. I've done all the work. I'll let you use the stuff. bring people through the door. Let's do it. I've done all the work. I'll let you use the stuff. We'll work it out. Let's do it. Nothing. I mean, virtually nothing. So the reason that we're selling some of the collection on December 1st at Prop Store is so we can fortify ourselves to fight the good fight for another few years.

Okay, so you're not waving the white flag. You're just bolstering. Fuck them. I'm not stopping until we get there. Do you have the bolts on any of the Frankenstein necks? That's a question I've never been asked. Congratulations. He's original.

But I would want to have Fred Gwynn. Sure, you're a Munsters guy too. That would be awesome. You know that it's so sad, but you know through his whole life, Fred Gwynn was ashamed of his performance on the Munsters. He thought it was so big and over the top that he couldn't watch it.

He wouldn't sign photos, Herman Munster photos until the very end of his life, but there's another one of those shows that's just pitch perfect. What did Jeff tell me on the phone that in those days, I'm going to see if I get this right, that you could go in to one of those shows that's just pitch perfect. What did Jeff tell me on the phone that in those days, I'm going to see if I get this right, that you could go in to one of the warehouses

or one of the supply rooms where this shit was stored back in the day and they would rent it to you? Well, actually, we don't call it shit anymore. Now they're priceless artifacts. I apologize. I mean, somehow when Gilbert says little piece of shit, it sounds better than you say it. He has that license.

So you were saying, so, you know, back in the day, if you went to Western Costume Company and you said, I want to rent a gray jacket with long sleeves, 46 long, and they go, okay, the rack's over there. And if you looked in the pocket and one of them said Fred Gwynn, they didn't care. They'd rent it to you for $10 a week. That was the production rental. over there and if you looked in the pocket and one of them said fred gwynn they didn't care they'd rent it to you for ten dollars a week that was the production rental and if for some reason it

didn't come back you'd have to pay 10 weeks rental so that ten dollars turned into a hundred dollars so i'd say well i'm telling you right now this piece is going to get lost is it okay to rent it and they said we don't care so i would buy them for 10 times rental and buy these incredible pieces that they they just didn't care i when i started writing punch up in the um late 80s early 90s you'd go in a prop department and there's genie's bottle and there's the the door knockers from the munster Mansion, and it meant nothing to them. This seems like science fiction now because we're so educated with American pickers and storage wars and Antiques Roadshow.

It seems like everybody would know this, but back then it was just stuff. It wasn't even barcoded. It was just stuff. I can call it shit, but you can call it stuff. Well, you know, it's interesting, too, and you weren't trying to make a quick buck. You were coming, as we said, you were a fan, so you were coming from the right place call it stuff. Well, you know, it's interesting too. And you weren't trying to make a quick buck. You were coming, as we said, you were a fan.

So you were coming from the right place with this stuff. You wanted it to be preserved. You didn't want it to deteriorate or disintegrate. You wanted to acquire it, sure, for your own jollies, but you also wanted to save it or rescue it in some cases. You're absolutely right. Profits were never the driver. They still aren't you know what i what i

what i valued were the shows and the characters and the and the you know the iconography of all of it and it's only in recent years you know i was just recently written up in forbes magazine now i'm a fucking financial genius guys that i knew that keith partridge's pants would be worth money i never i never came from any point of view other than it's history it means something to me it must mean something to other people i'm gonna save it and i was considered completely fucking crazy for the first 25 years of doing it now i'm considered a financial we've had another guest on this show who you probably know, Bob Burns. Oh, I mean, he is also a legend. And he's got some cool stuff.

Oh, he does indeed. I wouldn't mind buying a few of those pieces. Do you know Bob? I don't know him personally. I know him by reputation. He's obviously very well respected. We'll put you in touch. You should at least go see his stuff.

Sure, sure. He's obviously very well respected. We'll put you in touch. You should at least go see his stuff. Sure, sure. He's got the King Kong. He's got one of the armatures, the original armature I think for the King Kong model. I know when I visited Fari Ackerman they were rotted. The hair wasn't on them or the

skin wasn't on them but the dinosaurs from King Kong like the metal structure exactly right inside them yeah exactly right so those pieces are all on like an articulated metal armature that would like bend at the wrist the elbow the knee the foot and so the outside was kind of uh there was a molded bit of foam around it and then they would put flocking or hair or fur or whatever so that stuff was was made to survive one day of shooting not 70 years so it is almost impossible to find a miniature from that era that still has any of the you know any of the the foam coating

or the hair i mean that would be priceless of that surface. But just those armatures are very sculptural, and I have some very high-up clients who just put them on the shelf as art. You know, the patina, they're a little bit rusted. It's beautiful art. Give it a try. Colossal Obsessions. Well, we're going to stop right here. We've had so much fun with James Commissar.

We're going to pick this up next week. So tune in next week for part two with James Commissar. Colossal obsessions. Same Gilbert time, same Gilbert channel.