Plastic

Hostess Perle Mesta smiled and smiled. Big names are not exactly a novelty at Washington cocktail parties, but this was something else again. There, large as life among the warm martinis and cold canapes, were not only Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson, but Abe and Mary Lincoln--not to mention Captain John Smith and Pocahontas. F.D.R. waved his cigarette holder, Churchill chomped his cigar, and some 1,200 assorted Washingtonians stared at them and chattered at each other to raise money for the American Newspaper Women's Club and to celebrate the opening of the capital's new National Historical Wax Museum.

Fewer Garrotings. The block-long $600,000 museum at Fifth and K Streets, N.W., between the Capitol and the White House, is twice as big and contains nearly twice as many figures as its predecessor in an out-of-the-way, abandoned brewery, which last year drew half a million visitors. For Frank L. Dennis, a former Washington newspaperman and lawyer, has spectacularly revived in this age of electronic entertainment the macabre gimmick with which, 163 years ago, spidery old Mme. Tussaud made a killing.

Or rather, killings. In a world without television, Mme. Tussaud's waxworks supplied nightmare fodder to generations of Londoners, with its penumbral acres of dismemberments, garrotings, stabbings, shootings and dungeon doings. After visiting Mme. Tussaud's while on European assignment as a U.S. information officer, Dennis decided that a less gory and more educational waxworks might well be popular with tourists in the nation's capital. He was so right: in addition to the new museum, Dennis' Historic Figures Inc. has set up five smaller wax museums at Gettysburg, Harpers Ferry, Niagara Falls, Denver, and Gatlinburg, Tenn. In July a sixth will open near Manhattan's Rockefeller Center, for which a replica of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper is being constructed as part of a series of "great scenes from world history."

The Right Pocks. In this new wave of wax museums, the figures are not really made of wax but of a plastic called vinyl plestisol, which, in addition to being fireproof, does not have the glossy sheen that tends to make wax figures look like wax figures. In charge of creating them is Earl Dorfman, 48, who used to do department-store window displays.

Dorfman takes infinite pains to achieve exact historical accuracy, down to the last human hair inserted in the back of a plastic hand. He studied 18th century treatments for smallpox at the Army Medical Museum to get the pockmarks on George Washington's face just right. Henry Ford's stature and eye color were taken from his 1916 driver's license. In a tableau depicting Generals Eisenhower and Montgomery being briefed by a weather officer on D-day morning, the weather maps used are authentic Government documents stamped "secret," and the uniform worn by Ike's effigy is one of his own.

From Leif to John-John. "Anybody who has staggered through this maze has a pretty good idea of what's gone on in this country," said Dennis last week. That, at least, is the idea: first of the 74 scenes is Leif Ericson discovering the New World; Columbus' ship rocks on the water; Captain John Smith gasps rhythmically as Pocahontas saves him from a tomahawking brave; a spark of electricity sputters from the historic thunderstorm to Ben Franklin's kited key; Lewis and Clark paddle up a real river with a real waterfall in a real birchbark canoe; Douglas Mac Arthur strides up a Philippine beach; and next to last is Jacqueline Kennedy at her husband's funeral--hand on Caroline's shoulder, John-John at the salute.

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