Got your attention…………How many guys can truthfully say that Angelina Jolie has been in their iron bed? Well count me as one of them.
Back in 2003, I was in my store, Cathouse Antique Iron beds in Santa Monica Ca. A very pleasant woman came in and said she worked for a production company that was working on a movie that needed an iron bed for the opening sequence. They wanted the iron bed to have a very vintage, yet feminine look to it. She said the movie hadĀ gone through countless rewrites and directors, and was being resurrected one more time. The shot the iron bed was suppose to be in was in a flop house hotel in Bogata, the capital of Columbia…….when in fact it was actually the back lot of Fox Studio’s here in Los Angeles.
Whenever I have a set designer, or producer come to me for a iron bed, I always to and find out as much as I can about the story, plot, actors etc and especially the desired setting the iron bed is suppose to be in. I was told it was a husband and wife “spy movie” with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. The designer wanted something with a very believable look to it that would be appropriate for such a flop house…yet classy enough for the likes of Jolie.
I’d just gotten in what we refer to as an original “Art Panel” iron bed frame, from the mid-1800’s. The great thing about it was that it had the original art work, which most “art panel” beds have long since lost……in the past 150 to 200 years. I showed it to her and it was love at first sight. She had a truck pick it up later that day. It would be nearly two years before the movie was finally released in 2005. The set designer was kind enough to send me the following of Angelina in the iron bed. Years later I had occasion to see the designer again, for another movie she was working on. I asked her what ever happened to that great iron bed I’d sold her for the movie. She said she had her eye on it and had intended on keeping it in amongstĀ her warehouse of props……..although it was such a distinctive iron bed, I do she’d have been able to use it in any other movie after Mr & Mrs Smith. But she said the night before she was to have the set torn down that the bed had been used on……..it disappeared. She said it was obviously an inside job by someone who had been working on the film and had admired it.
Funny thing was…….this is what usually happens to all the beds we sell that appear in movies…….they disappear.