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Even for Houdini, There’s No

Escape
BY BOB POOL

APRIL 19, 2005 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

If the magicians could wave their wands and

make the problem disappear, the broadcasters
would shout out the good news.

Too bad things are not that simple at the

famous intersection of Sunset and Vine.

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That’s where a fire in an underground power

chamber spewed smoke into a Washington
Mutual Savings and Loan branch, coating its
money vaults, tellers’ counters and customer
areas with toxic PCBs.

But the most far-reaching damage was in the

bank’s basement, which houses the Society of
American Magicians’ Hall of Fame and Magic
Museum and the separate Pacific Pioneer
Broadcasters Museum.

Toxic materials have contaminated exhibits

and equipment that had been used by
illusionists such as Harry Blackstone Sr. and
Harry Houdini and collected over the last
century by the magicians’ group.

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In the museum, PCBs cover early radio sets,

thousands of original broadcast scripts and
transcriptions, and vintage equipment such as
Bing Crosby’s personal microphone.

Since the Dec. 13, 2004, transformer fire, the

two museums have been closed and sealed off
along with the bank. Washington Mutual
officials say that the branch’s cleanup cannot
begin until the museums remove their
displays.

Museum operators, however, said they cannot

move their property until it has been
decontaminated. And they said that neither
group can afford the about half a million
dollars that the cleanup and relocation would
cost each organization.

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“We have thousands of transcriptions and

tapes of old radio shows and old radios and
technical equipment dating back to the 1920s.
We have examples of the first TVs, thousands
of old scripts, a huge collection of antique
microphones, including Bing Crosby’s personal
mike -- the one he felt made him sound so
good,” said Martin Halperin, a vice president
of the 500-member broadcasters group.

“These are one-of-a-kind things. They’re

irreplaceable. We have broadcasters oral
histories, the entire KFI scrapbook that traces
that station back to its start. We have the
original SigAlert radio. We’ve duplicated a
complete working studio down there, with
turntables and equipment. We have the very
first audiotape machine -- the Ampex 200,
serial number 1.”

Halperin is a retired broadcast and sound

engineer who lives in Woodland Hills. He said
he had jokingly asked the magicians to conjure
up a solution to the contamination.

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“I said, ‘John, can’t you pull a rabbit out of the

hat and make this go away?’ ” Halperin said.

John Engman, president of the magicians’

local hall, said his society’s 8,000 members
can only wish that they had a magic potion for
that job.

“People are heartbroken about this. Members

have been meeting every Wednesday night for
34 years building the stages and theaters for
magic performances and museum rooms,” said
Engman, a retired Alhambra attorney and
part-time magician.

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“We have displays using mannequins to show

the development and history of magic back to
2500 BC. We have memorabilia from World
War II USO magic shows, one-of-a-kind items
like 1912 nightclub tricks -- thimbles and
cards. We have the minutes from the society’s
founding in 1902 -- we don’t know what
condition they’re in from the PCBs.”

Among the contaminated exhibits is the

Houdini handcuff display. It is a collection of
bracelets that the famed illusionist obtained
from those who had challenged his skills as an
escape artist. Dozens of cuffs and key sets are
mounted on black velvet boards, Engman said.

The northeast corner of Sunset Boulevard and

Vine Street has lengthy ties to show business
and broadcasting. For nearly a quarter-century
starting in 1938, NBC network radio shows
aired from a 4 1/2-acre studio complex that
contained four 350-seat studio-auditoriums
that were used for “The Fibber McGee and
Molly Show,” “The Jack Benny Show” and
other programs.

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It was there that Halperin launched his

broadcast career as a page several years before
NBC in 1949 began television operations at the
corner.

The distinctive, curve-fronted, green building

was torn down in 1964 after being made
obsolete by color TV studios that NBC built in
Burbank.

In 1967 the bank building was constructed by

Home Savings and Loan, which offered rent-
free basement space to the museums. That
arrangement was continued in 1998 when
Washington Mutual acquired Home Savings.

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Washington Mutual officials blamed an

underground electrical transformer owned by
the Los Angeles Department of Water and
Power for the contamination. They said that
PCB-laced smoke from a transformer fire was
vented through a subterranean conduit into
the branch’s basement. From there, the
contamination was circulated by the building’s
air-conditioning system throughout the
structure.

PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) were used as

an oil substitute in electrical transformer
cooling systems until 1977, when they were
banned because of health concerns. Experts
said older transformers may still contain fluids
with PCBs.

Washington Mutual set up temporary trailers

and resumed business at the corner on Jan.
28. Moon-suited workers decontaminated the
bank’s ATMs and restored them to service
March 12. But the branch’s main money vaults
and its 700 safe-deposit boxes remained off-
limits to employees and customers.

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Tim McGarry, a Washington Mutual

spokesman, said the bank helped customers
replace passports and other documents that
were in the inaccessible boxes until
decontamination experts constructed a new
doorway and a toxic-material-free passageway
leading to the boxes. Customers regained
access to the boxes, which he said tests had
indicated were not contaminated, on Saturday.

Once the entire building is decontaminated

through an Environmental Protection Agency -
approved wipe-down and high-strength
vacuuming, officials plan to gut and replace
the interior, McGarry said.

But as the museum operators and bankers

have wrestled with the problem, DWP officials
have remained silent about the venting of
PCBs into an occupied building and the
resulting damage.

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Department spokeswoman Darlene Battle

initially refused to discuss the contamination
on grounds that the incident was the focus of a
lawsuit -- an assertion that Washington
Mutual, the magicians and the broadcasters
said was untrue.

Later, Battle stated: “The department has

declined to comment on any of your questions.
That is our comment.”

Washington Mutual has offered to pay to box

up the museums’ collections. But the
magicians and broadcasters must find a place
to move the material to, McGarry said.

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Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters’ Halperin said his

group is reluctant to have outsiders pile
antique microphones and radios and
thousands of fragile discs of vintage broadcasts
-- including the complete CBS radio
entertainment and news collection -- into
boxes. “Anyway, what warehouse is going to
take contaminated storage?” Halperin asked.

The magicians’ Engman said it would cost

about $220,000 to decontaminate his
museum’s artifacts and an additional
$330,000 to move them. Things without hard
surfaces -- the theater’s upholstered seating
and the various display areas’ curtains --
would have to be thrown away. So would the
hand-built stages and display rooms.

The magic museum operates on a budget of

about $3,500 a year, he said.

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McGarry said the museums would have to

pack up and go because the bank was eager to
regain use of the building.

“Leaving the property in place is not an option

-- a building is not decontaminated unless all
exposed areas and contents are cleaned,” he
said.

Which means that the broadcasters and

magicians need to pull a disappearing act. And
fast.

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Bob Pool

Bob Pool retired in 2014 from the Los Angeles

Times, where he had been a general
assignment reporter on the Metro staff since
1983.

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