A Hollywood prop house is reopening six years after it shut down.
20th Century Props closed in 2009 due to losses it blamed on many films not being created in California as was once the norm.
Harvey Schwartz, owner, of 20th Century will re open at a new location in Van Nuys, CA on Thursday, August 27th, due to and increase in movie production California which has renewed demand for props used on film and TV shows.
Schwartz told L.A. Times reporter, Richard Verrier, “Business seems to be coming to town, so it’s looking good in Los Angeles these days.”Everyone I talk to says props are doing really well right now.”
The new business will operate out of an 18,000-square-foot facility on Roscoe Boulevard with an inventory of about 3,000 props, compared with 90,000 previously. The prop house will focus on renting, buying and selling mid-century modern furniture and lighting, which are popular right now among many film and TV set decorators.
Bob Zilliox, founding president of the Set Decorators Society of America, will manage the collection.
Schwartz, who has been in the prop business for nearly 40 years, launched the company in 1984. He expanded a decade later when he bought 20th Century Fox’s prop department.
The prop shop, which supplied the chandeliers in the blockbuster “Titanic” and futuristic furniture in “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” had been a fixture for two decades. His inventory included the rattan furniture set used on the TV series “The Golden Girls” and a desk owned by Howard Hughes and used in the movie “The Aviator.”
After closing the business, Schwartz kept some of his key inventory — among them a chair used by Liz Taylor in “Cleopatra” and a jet pack from “Minority Report ” — and opened a retail store in Beverly Hills called Harvey’s on Beverly.
He will continue to operate the store while running the prop house, which will initially have a staff of five people. One of his new clients is HBO’s “American Horror Story,” which has relocated from Louisiana.
