Today we’d like to introduce you to James Elyea.
James, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
As I was growing up in Texas and Kansas, my mother had an antique shop, so I was doomed from the start for a life surrounded by history. I attended Art Center College of Design in California as an illustrator and worked in the television news business, but, in my off hours, I would participate in living history events and collecting antiques. I reenacted Civil War, WWI and WWII events, even throwing lavish dances from those time periods with a full eighteen piece orchestra playing the original charts.
Looking for new ways to interpret history, I started working in the art department on feature films in the 1980s. Providing props and a wardrobe for Platoon was my big break. I opened History For Hire props house in 1985 and have been recreating the past ever since. I’ve had the pleasure of working on: Titanic (1997), Forrest Gump (1994), The Artist (2011), Babylon (2022), The Pacific (2010), A League of Their Own (2022), Elvis (2022), Wolverine (2013), 42(2013), Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), and thousands of other productions.
I enjoy the challenges we face every day at History For Hire. Recreating and reinterpreting history for new generations is the best job in the world.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The business of doing business can be challenging in any profession. In the entertainment business, those changes can happen overnight. I’ve had to stay flexible and adapt to new tastes and technologies.
When I first started renting props there were no fax machines, and if a client in another city wanted to see a prop we had to take a picture, run the film down to one hour photo for processing and overnight the physical photo to them. Working in a world of immediate gratification the technology has made things easier, but more is expected in a shorter amount of time.
Props have to be prepped and ready to ship immediately. History For Hire has shipped props to every continent in the world. Yes, we’ve even done projects in Antarctica.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
It is a lot of work to recreate history accurately and in a way that modern audiences can understand. We have one shot to get it right. Everyone deserves to have their story told accurately. We feel a great responsibility to the subjects of our projects and the film crew to give them the props and tools to portray the story they want to tell.
We start with researching the subject and time period. We have an extensive library that we have amassed over thirty-five years. There is so much information not on the internet. Opening a real book and discovering that one photo that inspires the look of the scene is exhilarating.
Our props may be historical and old, but our approach and fabrication is modern. We may provide an original studio television camera from the 1980s to a production, but we have recessed a modern digital camera in the body of the prop. We also follow good practices in making old props safe for today’s cast and crew.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Going back to the 1980s and the beginning of History For Hire, one of the scaries things I’ve done is to obligate myself to pay five times my apartment rent a month for our first building. There have been numerous times we should have gone out of business, but our sheer force of will has kept us going.
Contact Info:
- Website: Historyforhire.com
- Instagram: historyforhireprophouse
Image Credits
For the picture of Jim wearing the Boss tag show Scott Council. All other photos were taken in house.
