Hollywood Wax Museum …the selfie mecca.

Part of earning your “cheesey” California merit badge, is a visit to the Hollywood Wax Museum.  Say, you find yourself on Hollywood Blvd, and you need a respite from the throngs of visitors and tourists. Then, duck into the Hollywood Wax Museum, the longest running wax museum in the United States and the only one solely dedicated to celebrities and stars. This museum was founded by the Singh family in 1965 and they still run it.

I have always found wax museums to be somewhat creepy, mainly because of the history of wax statuettes.

During the 1970s and 1980s, my grandmother would routinely take  us to the Movieland Wax Museum in Buena Park, California. She loved it. After a couple visits, I decided some sleuthing at the local library was in order. Anyway, wax statutes derive from the funeral practices of the middle ages.

Basically, if someone of some importance died, typically the body was shuttled around to show the plebes. Well, you can imagine that without refrigeration and modern embalming techniques, the body rotted pretty darn fast. So, the practice of making a wax effigy of the person and even the practice of making a death mask (see future post on the Hollywood Museum) came into fashion. Instead of showing off the body, you showed off a wax effigy that lasted longer in the elements.

This association with death, no doubt, is the reason why all the movies about wax museums I can think about are horror movies (Mystery of the Wax Museum, House of Wax, Terror in the Wax Museum,Waxwork, Waxwork II …)

That being said, I never pass one up when I have the chance to visit.

Address:

6767 Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90028