The Structural Stars of the Silver Screen

Pasadena Heritage is offering a bus tour on June 16 highlighting Pasadena homes and buildings featured in such movies as “Gone With the Wind,” “Chinatown” and “Back to the Future.” The condominium complex Castle Green, the former Hotel Green, was in both “Bugsy” and “The Sting” and will be on the route, as will Pasadena’s City Hall, a Mediterranean-style structure seen in the Charlie Chaplin film “The Great Dictator.”

Pasadena neighborhoods are popular with movie producers because of the lack of palm trees (which shout L.A.), the variety of home styles and the proximity to Los Angeles, which eliminates travel expenses. The bus tour will take about three hours and drive by about 75 sites, four of which will offer a docent-led tour.

Call (626) 441-6333 for details on “Pasadena in the Movies.” Tickets will not be sold on the day of the tour.

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Christie’s June 27 auction “The Funhouse Collections” includes everything but the distorted mirrors. Included in the sale at the firm’s Beverly Hills location will be fun items such as tabletop Art Deco radios, restored antique jukeboxes including the 1920s Wurlitzer band organ from the carousel at the Santa Monica Pier, vintage Coca-Cola vending machines, wood-carved carousel figures and Baranger motion displays. The Barangers (manufactured by the company of the same name in Pasadena between 1937 and 1957) were used as store window displays. Advance viewing is June 22 through June 25. Information: (310) 385-2600.

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New York’s American Museum of Natural History plans to overhaul its Hall of Ocean Life, a 29,000-square-foot hall that opened in 1933. The hall is now best known for its 94-foot-long blue whale model, which was installed during the last renovation, from 1962 to 1969.

The new major renovation will cost about $25 million to $35 million, with $15 million donated by philanthropists Irma and Paul Milstein and $10 million from the New York City Council. The new plans include making the blue whale model appear to float in a “virtual ocean” made of special lighting, videos and sound systems. Above the whale, images of dolphins, giant jellyfish and other marine life will appear to swim across a 1,000-square-foot video projection screen.

The hall will close to the public in January 2002 and is expected to reopen in the summer of 2003.

Candace A. Wedlan can be reached at [email protected].