Hollywood Museum

Hollywood, California

Although not officially associated with the film industry, the Hollywood Museum claims to have the world's most extensive collection of Hollywood movie memorabilia -- or, in the local vernacular, "show biz treasures." With four floors and more than 10,000 artifacts, its Hollywood-size boast seems justified.

Curators at the Hollywood Museum can choose from a never-ending supply of new pop culture relics, and formerly A-list artifacts can quickly becomes forgotten in the frantic turnover of Hollywood fame. How much longer, for example, will the fickle public want to see the dog from "There's Something About Mary"?

Fortunately, the Museum has plenty of Tinseltown icons with staying power, such as Indiana Jones's whip, Sylvester Stalone's boxing gloves, Pee Wee Herman's bicycle, a prescription bottle of Marilyn Monroe's pills, Elvis's favorite bathrobe, and a pair of Ruby Slippers -- considered the single most valuable prop in film history. The basement of horror includes Hannibal Lecter's mask and the full-length hallway of jail cells from "Silence of the Lambs."

The Museum fills the art deco Max Factor Building, which took nine years to restore before it reopened in 2003. Exhibits devoted to Max, perhaps the most famous Hollywood makeup artist of all time, include the rooms where he made Marilyn a blonde and Lucy a redhead, and features one of his bizarre Beauty Calibration machines -- which, to make a Hollywood-appropriate comparison, looks like something out of a Hellraiser movie.