SOTHEBY'S PREPARE
MOVIE PROP AUCTION
Copyright 2002 Reuters News Agency
[ March 10th 2002 ]
A Buddha
from a Bond film and a coffin clock from The Rocky
Horror Picture Show are among thousands of film
props to go under the auctioneer's hammer at Sotheby's
this month. All belong to a vast collection from
a top London film prop shop that has supplied
gizmos and gadgets to some of the most famous
movies of the last 50 years.
A French
Empire style suite was used, for example, in Interview
With The Vampire, Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, Never
Say Never Again and Onegin, while a giant Buddha
from The Man With The Golden Gun resurfaced in
Tomb Raider, Carry On Up the Khyber and Indiana
Jones and the Last Crusade. A small gilded Buddha
that appeared in You Only Live Twice in 1967 starring
Sean Connery as Britain's most famous secret agent,
re-emerged over 30 years later in Entrapment,
again with the smooth-talking Scottish actor and
Catherine Zeta Jones.
For shop
owner Chris Paul, the ultimate gem in the March
13-15 auction has to be a century-old clock in
a full-sized coffin, which comes complete with
its own skeleton from the opening of the 1975
cult flick, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. "There's
a fascinating story about that," said Paul, who
has run the Ken Paul prop shop in north London
since her father's death in 1989.
"The
skeleton is rumoured to be the remains of the
young Italian lover and the secretary of the Countess
of Rosslyn. After his death she couldn't bear
to be separated from him, so she immortalised
him in the clock and took him everywhere with
her. Much better than being buried, don't you
think?," she said. Now, following her decision
to shut up shop, Sotheby's will sell its contents
- more than 1,500 lots which are expected to raise
over one million pounds ($1.4 million)
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