When Hollywood director Barry Levinson recently needed props for a still-untitled movie about 1940s Baltimore, a friend there alerted Tom Stiyer -- whose old pressure cookers and vacuum coffee makers passed the audition. "That one's going to be in the movie," said Stiyer, 39, sitting at a table in his Greenbelt living room and thumbing through a photo album laden with pictures of his soon-to-be famous cookware. So what if he sounds a bit like a proud stage parent? After all, he transformed these items from grease-encrusted thrift store finds to gleamingly restored glamor objects. "I sold them an old pink '61 Frigidaire for $200," said John Lefever, 37, friend and co-collector with Stiyer of old kitchen appliances, large and small. (If you look for it, the repainted refrigerator will be yellow in the movie.) But with appliance movie roles few and far between, it's the future of the big ones -- distinctive but dated stoves, washers, dryers and refrigerators -- that worries Stiyer and Lefever. They've rescued and restored dozens of doomed major appliances found curbside, discarded behind appliance stores and in thrift shops -- often in working order, or in need of only minor repairs. "We're trying to save milestones of design and technology, and most everything we've found is on the way to the dump," said Stiyer, whose dining room contains three stoves, a roaster oven, two washers, two dryers and a dishwasher -- all of which he uses. There are more in the kitchen, at a West Virginia getaway, in a Laurel warehouse and at Lefever's house. So far they've amassed about 100 large appliances of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, and hundreds of smaller ones. As collectibles, appliances have so far been overlooked by most people. "They don't have the glamor or sex appeal of automobiles," admitted Lefever. But when these two collectors spot one of these top-of-the-line machines they're always on the lookout for, there's rarely time to waste in acquiring it. "We can't wait because there's generally one day between when it's pulled out of a house where it's been for 20 or 30 years, and the day it goes to the scrap metal place," Stiyer said. The 1950s stoves in his town house dining room bear striking resemblance to mid-1950s cars -- particularly Chevrolets. From their big, bulky, 1955-Chevy-like front ends (40 inches wide, compared with today's standard 30 inches) to their elaborate dashboard-like dial systems, these monumental machines have everything but cruise control. For the two Frigidaire stoves, this resemblance may not be accidental: General Motors owned Frigidaire, and the crowned "F" insignia on one looks exactly like a hood ornament. They also look dauntingly complex, more in need of a commander than a cook. "All these stoves were designed by men for women, and it's not sexist to say some women in the '50s were intimidated by the technology," said Stiyer, who recalls that his mother disliked having to master new appliances. "They don't have a user-friendly appearance." The 1955 Westinghouse has burner control lights that show a different color for each temperature grade, "so you could see from across the kitchen what heat you were on," Stiyer said. The 1954 Frigidaire has a burner that can be converted into a deep well cooker. One stove's oven can be removed for allegedly easier cleaning -- but Stiyer contends it's no easier to clean and was probably intended for dramatic effect. Another memorable postwar machine of Stiyer's is a 1952 Bendix invention: a one-piece washer-and-dryer that cycles from washing clothes to drying them. "They were supposed to make washdays disappear in the 1950s, and by the end of the '60s they themselves had disappeared," he said, noting that the machines are still manufactured in Europe. The proliferation of postwar appliances was boosted by a wealth of World War II-gained technology -- such as timers, perfected during the war -- and the housing boom. Stiyer has collected masses of available written material on old appliances, much of it from homemaking magazines of the era, which in articles and glamorizing ads promoted the new wonder machines. "Women washed clothes, women cooked dinners, women did everything in their kitchens in black suede pumps, wearing beautiful dresses covered with aprons," said Stiyer jokingly, studying a magazine ad featuring a June Cleaver look-alike. For Library of Congress employee Stiyer and Lefever, a Beltsville appliance repairman, intrigue with the inner workings of appliances began early. Stiyer grew up in the Atlanta suburbs of the 1950s. His mother was a home economist, and he remembers liking major appliances even before age 5. "Whenever there was an appliance repairman at the house, I was always there behind him, kneeling down, watching what he was doing," recalled Stiyer. "Whenever we went shopping in the department store, I'd always want to be taken to the appliance department." "I got my first major appliance when I was 7 years old," remembered Lefever. A neighbor was discarding a washing machine, and he begged his parents to keep it in their Greenbelt yard for a while -- which they did for a few weeks. His brother Jeff -- with whom he's now in the repair business -- was also fascinated by appliances. In the family's basement, "we'd take them apart and play with them." And he's still partial to washing machines. "I appreciate the good engineering that goes into them," said Lefever, who with his brother a few years ago helped with a Time-Life series on appliance repair. "I have a 1954 Frigidaire automatic washer I still use, and it's marvelously smooth." His Beltsville basement has four permanently installed washers and three dryers. The collectors' ultimate dream is some day to have their collection permanently housed in an appliance museum of some kind. "No one is saving them as far as we know," said Stiyer. "I think it would be really neat if some corporation or institution -- like a utility company, or a steel or porcelain manufacturer -- were to decide a museum is a worthy thing to undertake. There's beauty in them; there's technology a lot of people never knew about."
