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The Haunted Studios
25041 State 92
Bagley MN 56621
Wholesale
Inquiries Telephone 213
928-5302
Email Us Now or use
our
Origin of The Haunted Studios Collection
The Haunted Studios Collection™ began in the summer of 1963. The collection's founder, Ken Patterson, that year met and was befriended by sculptor and 60s counter culture founding father Vito Paulekas. The Photo Below shows Ken along with other members of Vito's Dancers with the band The Fraternity of Man in 1967.
It was through his friendship with Vito that Ken met Jerry Hopkins, then talent coordinator (aka "kook-booker) for The Steve Allen Show that taped in a dilapidated theater on Vine Street in Hollywood. The one time silent film theater had been rechristened The Steve Allen Playhouse and converted to a "live on tape" audience rated television studio. Years later Ken and his friend David B. Doty would again cross paths with Jerry as a supplier of hand made God's Eye necklaces to Hopkins' Headquarters psychedelic shop in Westwood.
Ken made friends with many of the show's crew members, and spent his days "hanging out" at the studio. It was during one of these hang out sessions that Ken crossed paths with The Original Maltese Falcon. In that summer of 1963 The Steve Allen Show was getting a new set, and a general house cleaning. When the old set was coming down Patterson was offered a truck load of "trash" including a plaster casting of The Original Maltese Falcon, the very first artifact in what was to become The Haunted Studios Collection™.
The Falcon was to have been used in a comedy sketch featuring Allen as Sam Spade, but for reasons unknown the bit was never performed and the Falcon sat backstage at The Steve Allen Playhouse on Vine Street in Hollywood, never returned to rental house Century Props.
With help from Vito Ken produced the first mold from The Falcon. Within days he had sold the first copies through a collector's book shop just off of Hollywood Blvd. Sensing a large, and largely untapped market in movie collectibles Ken set about repeating his initial success by mining other dumpsters.
Vito and Ken spent many afternoons that summer visiting the trash bins of Universal, Paramount, Desilu, CBS, ABC, and other studios. This was long before the days of locked trash bins, and long before anyone realized the collector's value in the discarded props and life masks.
Ken also attended Vito's sculpture class where he perfected the techniques used today for the Studio 303 castings and finishes. Below are two pictures of Vito's studio, the first from 1966 and the second from 1968.
From the 1970s through the 1990s Ken worked in the film and television industries as well as teaching classes in Television Production and Post Production at Los Angeles City College and Pasadena City College. Using connections made during this period Ken was able to add to the collection, and when he retired from working in the industry in 1998 there were over 3,000 Life Masks and hundreds of original film props in the Haunted Studios Collection™.
For more information
Ken Patterson's Haunted Studios™ are known world wide for
their collection of props and Life Masks of the greatest stars of
motion pictures and television. We started this collection in
the early 1960s, and have been adding to it ever since.
If you have a question we would be happy to
hear it, just contact us at
questions@hauntedstudios.com
and we'll get back to you with an answer.
