Doing the Smart Thing With Tons of Dummies

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Doing the Smart Thing With Tons of Dummies

Shelley Freeman and Walt Wilkey’s Mannequin Gallery in Pacoima is where dummies in disuse get a second life as extras for movie, TV and commercial productions or come back to life as stunt players, artwork and stage replicas for performers. Freeman’s experience in theater promotion, combined with Wilkey’s skill as a fine art sculptor, brings them business from Hollywood studios and department stores. They now run a 4,200-square-foot office, studio and warehouse. The mannequin population varies, but recently they had 400 on hand.

Wilkey: “I moved to L.A. from Michigan in 1990 and set up my first studio in Burbank. I was working with department stores in the Midwest like J.C. Penney, Sears and Robinsons-May. I was doing window displays. Later I worked as a sales rep for Studio One. They did repair and refurbishing of mannequins for department stores. I was going to do refurbishing of mannequins for them, but it was in the recession and the stores didn’t have any money for it.

“I wasn’t pursuing mannequin rental. It never even occurred to me. I was a goofy guy from the Midwest. I didn’t know anything about the movie industry. I was in Burbank with all the big studios around me. One day, there was a note on my door from Warner Bros. They wanted to rent mannequins.”

Freeman: “His promotion work was limited to sending out one letter a day. One day I said to him, ‘I’m quitting my job and coming to work with you.’ It went from eight to 10 postcards a week promoting the business to over 1,000.

“We doubled our 2,000-square-foot space in Burbank in December 2002. We have seven employees. We buy mannequins from department store liquidations and refurbish them. Mannequin rentals are typically $95 a week for a full body. Torsos and headless forms are cheaper. We do specialties vintage or period mannequins with old-fashioned looks. We do faux crash-test dummies for Chrysler commercials. They rent for $300 a week and they cost $3,000. Sometimes they don’t use real ones, because they’re very heavy and very expensive. We sell new mannequins starting at $475. Our most expensive ones are life-casts, made from real people.

“Walt made a cast of R. Kelly’s face for two replicas of him for his show, right down to the hair and eyeballs. Now we’ve gone full circle: we’re refurbishing mannequins for Barneys New York. But it’s a small part of our business now.”

Matt Myerhoff

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