So when I heard that Emmy was going to be on display at the Fashion District of Philadelphia, I knew I had to be there on opening day. I actually walked through the new mall with three different friends on the first few days, just to try to get a feel of it. Sometimes a new public space needs a little breaking in.

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I am happy to report that the New Gallery feels just like the old one. It is very white and bright, the current trend for malls. (The decor reminds me of the mall at the Oculus in Lower Manhattan.) It has fewer sneaker stores, probably due to an exclusivity clause in the lease with the new Nike outlet. But the GameStop moved back into the same space it was before. It still smells like Cinnabon at the one entrance. It still feels like Philadelphia.

But the new mall focuses more on experiences: There’s a branch of the City Winery chain; soon there will be a movie theater and a Round 1, a Japan-based video arcade, bowling alley and bar. There is a candy-themed playplace where you can pay $28 and take cool Instagram photos. And, to the new mall owner’s credit, they have brought in some local businesses. Several of the stores are aimed at black customers: There’s a hat shop, a woman’s boutique, and a jewelry/art store, all black-owned. The crowd outside Dolly’s Boutique at its opening made it look like Jonathan and Emmy had just designed a new window display. American Hats had a band in the store opening day. Who knows how Philadelphians will view the mall, but it does just feel like The Gallery again in a lot of ways. I think that’s actually pretty good. I am cautiously optimistic.

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South Fellini, another of the local businesses, was my destination on opening day. The store and the mannequin stunt are the brainchild of two Philly natives, Tony Trov and Johnny Zito, who initially screenprinted bootleg t-shirts in order to fund their short films while at Temple. That developed into an online shop, and then a physical location on East Passyunk Avenue, a South Philly commercial strip. (Their store is near Cheesesteak Vegas, if you’d like to place it.)

But both continued to work in the local film industry, and Trov struck up a friendship with a longtime worker on Philly movie and TV sets. That man, who the store says wants to remain anonymous, worked on both Mannequin films. And one day, in a storage unit, Trov noticed this guy had an Emmy mannequin.

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He had lots of mannequin parts, actually. Trov and Zito instantly realized their prospects. They still make movies, and wanted to put it in one of the horror films they made together, but decided against it due to possible rights issues. (They’re well past the bootlegging stage of their careers.) Their South Philly store wasn’t big enough for it. But their mall spot in the new Gallery? When they signed a two-year lease with the mall, their anonymous benefactor reached out and said now was time to put Emmy back on display for Philadelphians to enjoy.

The mannequin, being a prop from a 1987 film, was not in great shape by the time it was procured by the store. Trov and Zito did some touch-ups on the face. They bought a new wig for it—“Disco Angel,” from a Delaware Ave. Halloween shop—and dressed it in some of the brand’s clothing.

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I stopped by the shop at lunchtime on opening day and talked with the owners. I took some photos. I figured it was going to be a 250-word post for Jezebel with some photos and I’d move on with my work.

But all was not as it seemed. Seeing the original blog post that scooped the city on this breaking news story, Kim Cattrall tweeted that, no, the mannequin on display was a fake! The South Fellini owners thought Cattrall was simply reacting to the stock photo with Magnatta’s initial article. They came back with a still of the actual mannequin. But Cattrall was still not convinced.

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A scandal! I had to investigate more. I contacted Cattrall’s publicist, but the actor is currently busy filming a new TV series (Filthy Rich) in New Orleans and could not comment. I went back to the store. I was under the assumption that it would be prohibitively expensive for the South Fellini guys to fake a mannequin that looks remarkably like Emmy, but there were some doubts. They informed me of a stamp on the bottom of the mannequin torso, from Wolf & Vine-Greneker, which constructed many of the mannequin props for the film. They had something that was at least somewhat legit.

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According to interviews done around the time of the film’s release, six mannequins were sculpted of Kim Cattrall for close-up shots. Another 20 or so were made for stunts. And the woman who sculpted those mannequins was Tanya Wolf Ragir, a Los Angeles-based artist. I called her.


Tanya Wolf Ragir was arms-deep in clay when she picked up the phone. But she agreed to talk to me about her work on Mannequin and its sequel, Mannequin Two: On the Move.

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Wolf Ragir has been an artist since she was a child. She is now, as she describes it, a “serious-as-a-heart-attack sculptor.” But, like many other artists, she also did commercial work. Her father’s uncle had founded a company that made fiberglass mannequins. She is an artist. It was a perfect fit.

She started with a kids’ line—relatively unheard of in those days in the mannequin industry, Wolf Ragir said. Through their parents, she recruited kids from bougie private schools and turned them into mannequin models. (She says some of these mannequins are still in use today, about 40 years later.) Later, she began developing mannequins of different body types. She sculpted lots of people for mannequin models—including Bill Paxton, early in his career.

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Wolf Ragir says she made around 1000 mannequins over the course of her time in the business. She was, as she tells it, incredible at her work. Seeing how much Emmy the mannequin looks like Kim Cattrall, I believe her. “For me to crank out a mannequin every two weeks,” she tells Jezebel, “it was just like playing scales as a pianist.” When the producers of Mannequin were looking for a mannequin maker, her name popped up. “I had a big, huge reputation,” she says. “I was easy to find.”

Molds in Tanya Wolf Ragir’s studio of various mannequin masks. One on the right is a mask of Meshach Taylor, made for the Mannequin sequel. The one on the far left is Bill Paxton.
Molds in Tanya Wolf Ragir’s studio of various mannequin masks. One on the right is a mask of Meshach Taylor, made for the Mannequin sequel. The one on the far left is Bill Paxton.
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
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She didn’t have to just make mannequins for this film. She had to make mannequins that fit the scenes. She was given a script with notes of every time a mannequin would appear on screen. She had to make a bunch of different poses.

“I was given the task to figure this shit out,” she says. “Here’s everywhere where a mannequin appears in the movie. I said to myself, ‘Look at the script, Tanya, what do you need to sculpt? Here’s where she turns into a mannequin. Here’s where she’s going into the chopper.’” (The climax of the film involves Emmy nearly falling down a mannequin destruction conveyor belt that is in the basement of a department store. I looked into it and these do not actually exist.)

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Wolf Ragir had to sculpt Emmy in various scenes. She even had to sculpt a mannequin arm giving the finger at the movie’s villains, in what has to be the first time a mannequin ever flipped the bird. The task was helped, of course, by the fact that Wolf Ragir had a “full-fledged mannequin factory” behind her work. She was able to get armloads of arms and legs for the movie.

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Cattrall tweeted that she sat for six weeks for Wolf Ragir. The session was just like any other. Cattrall posed in a Santa Monica garage Wolf Ragir was using as a studio at that time. The two became friendly. From her tweets, it’s clear Cattrall still really appreciated Wolf Ragir’s work. Who wouldn’t want a perfect mannequin of themselves?

But as fascinating as it was to learn about Wolf Ragir’s history as a mannequin sculptor, I still had the most important question unanswered: Was this mannequin really Emmy? After our call ended, I texted her a photo.

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“At first glance I don’t recognize the body (for sure the hands are someone else’s),” she texted me. But the head, she said, was hers: “It’s for sure her head, I just didn’t recognize the body.”

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I went back to the South Fellini guys. They explained to me how it all happened: When they found the Emmy mannequin, it was just a head and a torso. There were also a lot of other mannequin parts in varying conditions in that storage space. So they snapped various arms and legs onto her to make a full body.

The mystery was solved. The mannequin on display is Emmy’s head on some other mannequin body parts. For this reason, and only this reason, it is not like the Free Library’s first folio. It is not a complete specimen. It is more like one of the fragments of the First Folio that exist. It’s still important and historic. It’s just not a full copy.

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It’s not her body. And it doesn’t come to life at night. But it’s still Emmy—her head and torso, at least. And a little piece of movie history is now on display for anyone to see.

Emmy—well, her head and torso—back on display for the world to see at last.
Emmy—well, her head and torso—back on display for the world to see at last.
Photo: Dan McQuade (Jezebel)