Not Taking It Sitting Down

Of all the auctions in all the towns in all the world, Robert G. Noe had to walk into theirs.

It was April 1975. KCET was selling, among other things, movie memorabilia over the airwaves. Noe fell hard when he saw the brown leather chair from the film “Casablanca.” He paid $350 and displayed it proudly in his Ojai home for the next 22 years.

The businessman says it was only recently that he learned his so-called “Bogart chair” was bogus.

Now he is suing the station and Warner Bros. Pictures for misrepresentation, saying his Tinseltown treasure didn’t amount to a hill of beans.

“The chair is a fake,” said Oxnard attorney Glen M. Reiser, who filed a lawsuit Friday on Noe’s behalf. “Round up the usual suspects. That’s all I have to say.”

The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, claims that KCET and the Warner Bros. prop department intentionally misrepresented the value of the chair when it was auctioned.

Representatives at both KCET and Warner Bros. said they were unfamiliar with the case and were not aware a lawsuit had been filed.

“We have no knowledge of this lawsuit, so we could not comment,” said Barbara Goen, vice president of communications for KCET.

The lawsuit alleges the chair, donated by Warner Bros. for the auction, was wrongfully advertised. A script from the sale of Item No. 5181 reads, in part:

“You must remember this . . . a wooden and leather chair from the movie ‘Casablanca.’ The star--Humphrey Bogart. The chair--a prize for Bogart fans. We know there are millions of you out there--Let’s hear from you.”

*

The sales pitch hooked Noe, a fan of the 1942 movie classic.

“At the time, I thought, this is something special,” he recalled.

“I had to run out to a phone booth to bid on the item,” he said. “There was, I guess, one other party bidding. I forgot actually how much I paid for it, around $300. In those days, that was a lot of money for me.”

According to his lawyer, the highest bid was $350, and Noe walked away with what he believed was a treasure from Hollywood’s golden era.

Noe framed the script of the auctioned item along with his receipt, on which were written the words: “Bogart Chair.” The frame hangs above the chair in his home and has been a prized conversation piece for years, he said.

“I thought it would be something of some importance someday,” he said.

*

Noe says it was not until 1995, when he told an antique dealer about the chair, that he learned it was not authentic.

“It was her opinion that this would be a significant piece and I should really think about it,” he said. “They did several checks on it and they came back to sadly report that it wasn’t in the movie.”

Marcia Tysseling, president of Star Wares on Main, a Santa Monica-based business that specializes in acquiring and appraising film collectibles, remembers the chair well. But she is sure no one else ever will.

Scanning the scenes from Rick’s Cafe, Tysseling said she could find not one shot in which the alleged Bogart chair makes an appearance.

“All you had to do was watch the movie and it was just not there,” she said. “Obviously, it came from a prop house, but to find what movie it was in--who knows?”

The value of film and television memorabilia has increased dramatically in recent years, Tysseling said, and auction houses are fetching sizable bids for even small props used in big films.

At a recent Christie’s sale, a lamp from “Casablanca” sold for $14,950, Tysseling said.

And a red leather chair used by Bogart in the film “The Maltese Falcon” sold for $32,200 earlier this month, Tysseling said. In her view, that piece was inferior to Noe’s chocolate-colored leather chair.

“Who knows, he could have gotten $50,000 for that,” she said. “I just feel so bad for him because it would have been worth a lot. All these years, he has been holding onto it as a special icon, a little treasure. It has to just be devastating to him.”

Noe says his lawsuit is not about money. He just wants a real Bogart chair.

“A court can require an order of specific performance,” Reiser explained. “If there is a Bogart chair out there, the vendors would be required to procure it.”

You must remember this, Reiser said, “He wants what he bargained for.”