‘It’s very bittersweet for me’: Hollywood Blvd. Cinema to auction decades of movie memorabilia to fund makeover

Do you want to bid on a Buddha? There’s a bunch of them.

How about storyboard sketches from the 1960 John Wayne movie, “The Alamo”? A sculpture of King Tut’s burial mask? A dress once owned by Whitney Houston? A life mask of Vincent Price? A stainless steel ice bin? Marilyn Monroe’s funeral prayer card?

Or the grail, perhaps, the facsimile Bluesmobile secured atop the Hollywood Blvd. Cinema in Woodridge, with fiberglass statues of John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd included. Opening bid: $5,000.

Some 600 items reflecting decades of accumulated memorabilia, decor, fixtures, and furnishings will be on the block when Donley Auctions holds “The Redesign Auction” for Hollywood Blvd. Cinema.

The in-person auction will begin at 9 a.m. Saturday, March 28, at the movie theater, 1001 75th St., Woodridge. Doors open at 8 a.m.

Online bidding already is underway at donleyauctions.com.

“It’s very bittersweet for me,” said theater owner Dana Pobanz, who climbed the management ladder after starting as a server 17 years ago at sister site Hollywood Palms Cinema in Naperville. She has been at the Woodridge theater for the past 10 years.

Hollywood Blvd. will remain open while Pobanz executes an overhaul of its 10 theaters, bar area, lobby and the “boulevard” leading to the theaters and decorated with actors’ photos.

She said many of her customers aren’t familiar with the likes of John Wayne. And while people can bid on an Anubis statue from the Egyptian Theater and life-size terra cotta warriors from the Chinese collection, there are few actors of color currently represented.

“I feel like Hollywood is where dreams go, and you want to be able to see yourself represented,” said Pobanz, whose favorite film is “Gone with the Wind.”

“I know we do need to be updated,” she said. “All of the funds are going right back into the building. Nothing will be kept, it’s just to get the new chairs, to do all the updates we’re planning, whole new menu, new rewards program.”

The conversion will begin “right away,” Pobanz said, with electronic signs replacing the display cases holding posters of current attractions. Those cases are also up for bid.

Working on theaters three at a time to highlight individual themes by genre, such as horror, fantasy, crime, and drama — the latter located in the current “Red” theater, where the March 28 in-person auction will be held — Pobanz anticipates completion by September.

“It’s all Hollywood. It’s very centric of Hollywood, but at the same time it’s just giving it a little bit of a face-lift,” she said.

Licensed auctioneer Randy Donley will be heading “The Redesign Auction” live on stage while on-site assistants simultaneously relay online bids to him as items are shown on the screen.

Donley and his wife, Susan, co-own Donley Auctions in Union, Illinois, which evolved out of Donley’s Wild West Town in Union, southeast of Marengo.

They’ve helped liquidate assets for places such as the Medinah Temple in Chicago, and conducted the auction at which Chloe Mendel purchased the neon Orange Garden restaurant sign as a birthday gift for her husband, Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins, Randy Donley said.

He’s impressed by the Hollywood Blvd. collection.

“If I summed it up in one word, I would really say ‘amazing,’” he said.

“What I keep stressing to people about this auction that I love is there’s something in everybody’s price range,” Randy Donley said. “We’ll do auctions where if you’re not going to spend $5,000, don’t show up. And that limits 90% of most auction-goers, they’re not coming to spend that kind of money.”

At the Hollywood Blvd. auction, he said, people can walk out with something for $25 or less. However, there are also items that could hit “$50,000 on up.”

The items from Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, including a $25,000 neon sign that once decorated the movie palace, hold particular interest to the Donleys.

“This is a sliver of time when these items will be available, because after they’re bought up, you might not see them for many, many years,” Susan Donley said.

Pobanz, who will add new decor and goodies to Hollywood Blvd., is sensitive and sentimental enough about the old treasures that, although she’ll be in the building, she won’t attend the auction unless needed.

She has no financial expectations for the auction. But the more it makes, the fewer good ideas get left on the cutting room floor.

“The renovation for all of the theaters is a lot of money,” Pobanz said. “And the more we raise, the cooler they can be, the more iconic.

“Remember those chairs that you’ve been asking for for a decade?” she added. “Well, we have to do this to get them.”