It\u2019s Monday afternoon in Madison Heights, a stately Pasadena neighborhood where the seasonal decor is as tasteful and predictable as a Hallmark movie. <\/p>\n
Suddenly, like a strange wind, a U-Haul truck quietly pulls in front of an elegant home. Within minutes, a crew of black-clad workers begin emptying the truck\u2019s contents, briskly lining the sidewalk with piles of leering jack-o-lanterns, disassembled gargoyles, bags of shredded rags and a line of gaping brown \u201cskellys\u201d in floozy gowns.<\/p>\n
Dr. Halloween has arrived. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Chris Bryant and his wife, Jasmine, are big fans of Halloween and have hired the Dr. Halloween crew to give their yard a spooky makeover. Here\u2019s a before photo of their Pasadena home.<\/p>\n
(Juliana Yamada \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Skeleton figures are laid out in the front yard of the Bryants\u2019 front lawn.<\/p>\n
(Juliana Yamada \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
In less than three hours, Dr. Halloween and his crew of eight will transform the broad front yard of this Fillmore Street home into a riotous Halloween fun house. It\u2019s an annual tradition that Chris and Jasmine Bryant inherited when they bought their spacious home in 2018, and they were happy to continue after they moved in, with the help of the crew who creates a different spooky scene every year. <\/p>\n
The job sounds fun, but this crew is all business, cranking giant bony fingers into the ground, styling the wayward hair of ghoulish girls, impaling skeletons \u2014 \u201cskellys\u201d \u2014 on tall garden rebar so they can be posed and wrestling with the assembly of a towering mummy, gruesome green witch and headless horseman on a rearing stead. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Share via Close extra sharing options <\/p>\n
They rarely talk and never stop moving, and amid them all is Dr. Halloween<\/a> himself \u2014 Bob Pranga (a.k.a. Dr. Christmas<\/a> after Oct. 31) \u2014 directing what goes where. Pranga, 63, claims he\u2019s mostly a watcher these days, because he\u2019s been decorating ritzy homes for the holidays since 1989. Also, his crew members are all pros, but really, he\u2019s just as busy as the others, unconsciously pushing back the bangs of his blond, boy-band hair every few minutes as he rushes from the street to the yard, scrutinizing the effects, deciding the best orientation for the creatures, and sending crew members scurrying to assist another in need. <\/p>\n His longtime friend and business partner, Debi Staron, 67, quietly bustles around in a button-front Santa shirt (\u201cWe do Christmas too, so why not?\u201d), pulling spooky accessories and body parts out of boxes so they can be assembled and placed. Her well-worn cycling gloves allow a peek at her perfect dripping-blood manicure, and a bulky knee pad helps steady a problem leg because she\u2019s up and down so often. <\/p>\n Israel Cruz completes a stack of jack-o-lanterns while decorating Chris and Jasmine Bryant\u2019s home in Pasadena.<\/p>\n (Juliana Yamada \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n Cruz also assembles a giant warty-faced witch that looms nearly 12 feet tall.<\/p>\n (Juliana Yamada \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m basically the nuts-and-bolts partner, especially when we do Christmas,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen we started, Bob was the one decorating inside the lovely house, and I\u2019d be outside on a ladder in the driving rain, trying to hang lights in the bougainvillea. I also know how to fluff a tree properly after it comes out of a box. Most people just put up their artificial tree and wonder why it doesn\u2019t look as good as it did at the store. They don\u2019t realize you have to fluff out the branches \u2014 it usually takes at least an hour.\u201d <\/p>\n Staron doesn\u2019t linger long to talk. She makes sure all the crew keep hydrated, and then she\u2019s back trying to install a brighter light in a giant plastic cauldron. Meanwhile, Pranga is all nervous energy. <\/p>\n A headless horseman looms above headstones and mouthy skeletons, big and small. <\/p>\n (Jeanette Marantos \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been doing this home so long, maybe I\u2019m losing track,\u201d he says, casting a critical eye at the headless horseman rearing above him. \u201cI think it\u2019s different this year? Did we have him before?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, no,\u201d his client Jasmine Bryant reassures him, pulling out her phone to show photos of last year\u2019s underwater-themed display of ghostly divers, flirty mermaid skeletons and adorable baby shark \u201cskellys.\u201d \u201cAnd before that, \u201c she says enthusiastically, \u201cwe had the creepy babies …\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cOh yeah,\u201d Pranga says, brightening. \u201cWe had a baby riding a giant spider! That was great.\u201d<\/p>\n The Bryants aren\u2019t the only ones smiling by the time the last strips of white and purple tulle are wrapped around the mummy and the giant warty witch is securely tied against a tree. Shortly after the work begins, pedestrians stop to admire and passing cars slow to a crawl, with cellphones poking out the windows for photos. <\/p>\n \u201cAnd so it starts,\u201d Pranga says, rolling his eyes, but clearly, this is attention he enjoys. <\/p>\n Bob Pranga stands near the outdoor Halloween display at the home of Chris and Jasmine Bryant in Pasadena, which Pranga, business partner Debi Staron and their crew of seven transformed into delightfully spooky Halloween decor. <\/p>\n (Juliana Yamada \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n It may not be the audience he expected when he moved to New York City to become an actor in 1984, but he and Staron\u2019s work creating holiday fantasies for well-heeled clients has nonetheless resulted in tons of applause as the \u201cTree Stylists to the Stars,\u201d from regular appearances on local TV shows, decorating homes, hotels and TV\/movie sets for everything, from \u201cElf\u201d to \u201cThe Brady Bunch\u201d; creating their own book, \u201cChristmas Style,\u201d<\/a> in 2004; and 10 years later, their own TLC Christmas special, \u201cDeck the Halls with Dr. Christmas.\u201d<\/a> <\/p>\n It\u2019s not like any of this was planned, Pranga says. He was just a Midwestern boy from Sturgis, Mich., (\u201cNot the famous one with the motorcycles \u2014 we\u2019re the other one\u201d) who fell in love with the idea of Hollywood and all its celebrities by watching TV shows as a child in the 1960s and 1970s. <\/p>\n \u201cWe were basically middle class so there weren\u2019t a lot of big to-dos throughout the year, but Christmas was always a big deal,\u201d he says, \u201cChristmas by the pound. My grandparents always had a big Christmas Eve party and the weekend before there was always the American Legion Christmas party. We always had a giant blue spruce in the living room that my sister and I got to decorate. And on Christmas morning, we took forever to open presents because we didn\u2019t want Christmas to be over. \u201c<\/p>\n At Hope College in Holland, Mich., he studied theater and got an internship in New York City the summer before his senior year. Typically, theater interns swept stages, he says, \u201cbut I told them I wanted to work with a network, so I was assigned to work with Lorne Michaels on \u2018Saturday Night Live.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n Bob Pranga sneaks up behind crew member Susan Bratton while she dresses a line of gaping \u201cskellys\u201d in witch hats and satin floozy gowns. \u201cI call them my party girls,\u201d Pranga says, while in the background another crew member, Vicki Dimitri, arranges a tombstone in the display.<\/p>\n (Jeanette Marantos \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n Susan Bratton arranges a lacy shawl on a friendly \u201cskelly\u201d \u2014 Dr. Halloween\u2019s shorthand for skeleton. <\/p>\n (Juliana Yamada \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n His job mostly involved getting coffee and running errands, but the experience was everything a celebrity seeker could ask for, he says. Many years later, he actually decorated the homes of some of the celebs he met on \u201cSNL,\u201d such as Carrie Fisher and her mother, Debbie Reynolds. His most memorable moment though, he says, was accidentally walking into the dressing room of \u201cSNL\u201d cast member Gilda Radner while she was sitting inside. <\/p>\n \u201cThe rules were, if the celebrities were in the room, you couldn\u2019t go in, and I was terrified,\u201d he says, \u201cbut she said, \u2018Honey, sit down and have some fruit. I have this big fruit basket and I can\u2019t eat it all myself. You look tired, and you\u2019ve got to take care of yourself in this business because otherwise, it will kill you.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n He says he hesitated, worried about breaking the rule, but Radner insisted. \u201cShe said, \u2018If you have any problems with them, tell them I asked you to help me, because after all, honey, I\u2019m the star,\u2019\u201d Pranga says. \u201cShe wasn\u2019t being egotistical. It was very businesslike, a moment of power, and I was like, \u2018I want to have that power.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The following year, after he finished his degree, Pranga moved to New York with $100 in his pocket. One of his friends found an apartment \u201cin a crack-whore neighborhood called Red Hook in Brooklyn. It\u2019s gentrified now, but then, you walked over junkies in the morning to get to the bus,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople always ask me, \u2018Weren\u2019t you scared?\u2019 and the answer is: \u2018No, because I was in New York and I was starting this great adventure\u2019 \u2014 I was trying to figure out how to be an actor.\u201d<\/p>\n Vicky Dimitri fixes a black veil on one of the yard\u2019s ghostly apparitions after creating hairdos for the other ghosts\u2019 matted locks.<\/p>\n (Juliana Yamada \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n As it turned out, the acting gigs were rare, but at least it\u2019s how he met Staron, another aspiring actor who, like him, was attending Bob Collier\u2019s Commercial Acting School<\/a>. To pay the rent, he found work at Macy\u2019s famous flagship department store working in various departments until he finally landed on the Christmas floor, finishing trees. <\/p>\n In the 1980 and \u201990s, Macy\u2019s was so prestigious \u201cwhen I\u2019d go home for Christmas, all people wanted was a Macy\u2019s shopping bag,\u201d he says. During his five years in New York, he worked other jobs too: window dressing at Bergdorf Goodman and leading tours around the city. <\/p>\n \u201cIt was all survival work, but being a city tour guide also taught me to hustle,\u201d he says. \u201cHustle has a negative connotation, but it helped me figure things out. My foundation came from the Midwest, where you work hard, learn how to be nice to people and be happy with what you get. Being a New York City tour guide taught me how to survive.\u201d <\/p>\n Debi Staron calls herself the \u201cnuts-and-bolts\u201d partner of Dr. Halloween and Dr. Christmas, usually wearing fingerless gloves and a bulky knee pad to make it easier when she\u2019s assembling gear or \u201ccrawling around under Christmas trees,\u201d but she still takes time for snazzy seasonal manicures from Paris Nails near her home in Chatsworth. <\/p>\n (Juliana Yamada \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n By the end of 1988, Pranga and Staron were ready for a change. As he recalls, \u201cShe came to my Christmas party and said, \u2018I\u2019m thinking of moving to California in April,\u2019 and I was like, \u2018Well, I\u2019ll go with you.\u2019 And that\u2019s pretty much how my life has been, all just happenstance. Nothing was planned.\u201d <\/p>\n They found a small apartment in West Hollywood in the spring of 1989, which they shared with another friend to keep their costs low. \u201cI came to L.A. with $300, so I felt like I was making progress,\u201d Pranga says jokingly. Within weeks, he was working again as a tour guide, this time on tour buses in Hollywood. \u201cI was literally making everything up,\u201d and it became another kind of survival job, he says, since he had to keep changing tour companies until he found one whose paychecks would reliably clear.<\/p>\n Then in the fall of 1991, Pranga spotted a want ad for a Christmas shop manager at the Glendale Galleria.<\/p>\n \u201cI called and said, \u2018I have experience at Macy\u2019s doing Christmas,\u2019 and they literally gave me the job sight unseen over the phone because experience at Macy\u2019s had so much clout,\u201d he says. \u201cThen I told them I had an assistant I worked with, and they hired us both over the phone. So I went home that night and told Debi, \u2018I got this job over the phone to run a Christmas store, and you\u2019re my assistant. Do you wanna?\u2019 And she said, \u2018Yes, I\u2019ll help you,\u2019 and that\u2019s how it started.\u201d<\/p>\n Mark Ilvedson, on the ladder, wraps raggedly strips of purple fabric and white tulle on a 12-foot-tall mummy, while Charly Sam, below hands him fabric and keeps his ladder secure. Debi Staron recommends adding shredded bits of cheesecloth, tulle or other lightweight fabrics to all Halloween displays because the movement gives the decor a spookier vibe. <\/p>\n (Jeanette Marantos \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n