SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Modern Props founder John Zabrucky wanted to create a small atomic bomb, “Something a real bad guy would have in an attache case.”

The Warren native decided to get an expert opinion.

“I guess I was pretty naive,” he said. “When we had a space shuttle (to create props for), I called NASA. So I called the FBI — ‘Do you have any idea what a little bomb would look like?’ And they came and visited me.”

Luckily, Zabrucky could prove he owned a prop house, and as far as he knows, he isn’t on a terrorist watch list somewhere.

It’s a funny story, but it’s also one that illustrates the extremes he was willing to go to in order to create something that would impress production designers and wow audiences.

Further proof came with the first steps inside the warehouse where Zabrucky’s props and his collections are housed.

Right inside the door is a giant spinning globe about 7 feet in diameter that was prominently featured in HBO’s “Westworld.” Standing guard across from it is an even bigger robot from the Robin Williams’ movie “Toys,” and next to it is a repair chair from “RoboCop.”

Peer through the rows of shelving packed with sci-fi toys and collectibles and one can glimpse an egg chair from “Men in Black” or view cases packed with realistic-looking high-tech weaponry and communicators from “Star Trek” films, the cult sci-fi series “Firefly” and other beloved movie and television franchises.

In the parking lot of the warehouse are more than 20 40-foot shipping containers also filled with props and extra parts.

Soon, those props will come to Warren for a proposed science fiction museum that will be created by the Trumbull County Historical Society.

The first four semi-trailer trucks filled with large and small pieces dating back to the start of the company in 1977 are scheduled to arrive this month.

Jerry Casale called Zabrucky’s Modern Props “The Prada of prop companies.”

As one of Zabrucky’s closest friends since they were both students at Kent State University in the late 1960s and early ’70s, Casale may be biased, but he’s a man who knows something about creativity and innovation — he’s one of the founders of the band Devo.

“Calling Modern Props a prop company is like calling Jimi Hendrix just a guitarist,” Casale said.

Detailed record keeping isn’t among Zabrucky’s many talents, and a faulty computer program erased much of the information about which props went where. However, individual pieces in the collection have appeared in more than 100 films, television series and commercials. One device is so well-known that fans have dubbed it “The Most Important Device in the Universe” and created YouTube video compilations of its screen appearances.

A timeline on his website (johnzabrucky.com) reveals a list that ranges from the largely forgotten, short-lived television series “Quark” to box-office hits like “Ghostbusters,” “Batman Returns,” “Back to the Future II,” “Total Recall,” “Independence Day” and “X-Men.”

GROWING UP IN WARREN

Modern Props may have been based in southern California, but the experiences Zabrucky had growing up in Warren shaped the career he found out west, even if it is something he couldn’t fathom when he was a child.

Zabrucky, 76, loved science from an early age and also mechanical things. He was fascinated by the inner workings of the pinball machines at the sandwich shop his grandparents owned on Mahoning Avenue NW, and he often would explore the scrapyard nearby.

“I would draw a lot of fantasy devices, things that the military might use if we were invaded,” he said. “I would make my own version of a torpedo. I remember a whole other section where I would make automobiles, or my idea of an automobile.”

He entered the science fair every year, winning in 10th grade by building his first robot.

“It was primitive. I would draw a line on the floor and the robot would follow it.”

It was another robot that ignited his passion for science fiction. He talked his grandmother, who only spoke Italian, into taking him to see “Forbidden Planet,” a 1956 film starring Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, Leslie Nielsen and Robby the Robot.

“Robby just seemed simpatico. He could be your buddy,” Zabrucky said. “It made me want to know more about science and really solidified my minor league destiny with the future.”

Not all of his childhood experiences were happy ones. He was a boy drawn to science and arts in a community obsessed with sports. Whether they were picking teams alphabetically or by ability, Zabrucky was the last one chosen.

“I was really thin and skinny and not into sports at all, not a good thing to be if you lived in Warren in those days.”

KENT STATE

He found like-minded students after graduating from Warren G. Harding High School and, after a year at Youngstown University, studying art at Kent State University.

The campus was fertile ground for artists, musicians and filmmakers, and he and Casale both believe it played an important role in shaping their creative endeavors.

“This environment nurtured us in a very unusual way,” Zabrucky said.

The man who made a career out of envisioning the future also proved to be prophetic in seeing the near future at Kent State.

During a dinner Aug. 1 at his home in the Pacific Palisades, Zabrucky took out his cellphone and showed a photograph he staged of his girlfriend at the time lying lifeless in front of a National Guardsman. The photo was taken on May 3, 1970, the day before National Guardsmen killed four people and wounded nine others during an anti-war protest.

Zabrucky’s mother sought only three career paths for her son — doctor, priest or teacher. She reluctantly accepted his artistic pursuits when he told her he could teach art, which he did as a graduate student at Kent. He also taught at the University of Akron and at Mansfield Reformatory, which he described as “one of the scariest places you’ll ever see.” The prison, which closed in 1990, was a primary filming location for “The Shawshank Redemption.”

His own art was attracting attention as well, winning awards at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s 53rd May Show and the Art Directors Club of New York.

Zabrucky enjoyed teaching but one day he caught himself using the exact same words one of his old teachers had used.

“Oh, God, I’m like a tape recorder,” he thought, and started looking for another path.

GOING TO CALIFORNIA

He decided to go to California with his girlfriend, who was having trouble finding work locally and hoped to use her artistic talents in the film industry.

Zabrucky wanted to focus on his art, but he struggled financially there. He couldn’t find a decent job, and the relationship ended. It was so bad, he was sleeping in Casale’s dining room and standing in line each month to collect $32 in food stamps. His biggest fear was that one of his former students might see him standing there.

In a story he first told the newspaper in 2020, he went to visit his ex-girlfriend, with whom he remained friends, on the set of a science fiction television show. While waiting for shooting to stop for lunch, he watched a poorly built prop melt under the hot lights, and he started to chuckle.

“Oh, I suppose you could do better,” said a producer who overheard his laugh.

Zabrucky responded, “While I’m sleeping, I could do better.”

The producer walked away in a huff, but she came back after lunch. Afraid he would say something to make it worse (and possibly get his ex in trouble), he tried to ignore the producer.

“She says to me kind of covertly, ‘Do you really know how to build these kinds of things?’ Yes. ‘Do you have a couple minutes? I’d like to talk to you in my office.’ I said, ‘No, I’m busy.’ I’m living in a dining room and collecting food stamps, and this comes out of my mouth.”

Nevertheless, she persisted, and thankfully so. She explained exactly how the business could work. If he built something for the show and sold it to the studio, he would run afoul of union rules. However, he could build a prop for the show and rent it to the studio, and then continue to rent that prop out for other projects.

The producer received scripts in advance, she would tell Zabrucky what they needed, and he would build it. Then she would say, “I know a guy we can rent that from,” when it came time to do that episode.

CREATING MODERN PROPS

With a friend and an actor who had some money to invest, Zabrucky started Modern Props, picking the name because it both sounded contemporary and like the company could have been around for decades.

The first batch of props were built in a garage, and Zabrucky stayed on food stamps for the first year.

The company did OK initially, but not as well as he expected. He explained his frustration to one of the set decorators who came to see him and was told that many of them expected “a gift” in exchange for their business, a kickback.

Shortly after that, Zabrucky met the decorator at the place where he got his coffee every morning and gave him an envelope with $10,000 in it. He had no regrets.

“Once you’re really broke, it changes you,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. He deserved every penny of it, but it was weird.”

It continued for several years until the film studios started to crack down on the practice, and Modern Props became so well respected that it no longer was necessary.

What made Modern Props stand out was the quality of its work.

“Props typically in those days were made with crappy materials. If you had a technical prop, you were lucky the prop lasted for the duration of the film … I said to these guys, the props we make have to last for a minimum of 20 years. They have to go to that film and that film and that film, and the whole time they have to look good. They can’t fall apart and they have to last, and most of the machines we’ve built have lasted 35, 40 years.”

MODERN PROPS LEGACY

Zabrucky decided to close Modern Props in 2019 and was looking to downsize. He sold off all of the furniture and art Modern Props rented to film and television, and he is in the process of auctioning off a collection of 11,000 movie posters through the prestigious Heritage Auctions.

He sold a few of the props he made over the years and rejected offers for many others.

“It’s always nice to have money,” he said, but he wanted to keep the collection together, if possible.

He didn’t want it to be in Hollywood, because there are other movie museums in the city. He decided to approach his alma mater and his hometown. If neither was interested, his plan B was to approach existing science fiction museums in Italy, where he has a home, and France.

He reached out to both around the same time, and if Trumbull County Historical Society Executive Director Meghan Reed hadn’t responded so quickly, Kent State might be the one issuing a press release about its new science fiction museum.

“Someone from Kent State called and said, ‘Mr. Zabrucky, we want you to understand the dean is very interested in what you’re doing, but he doesn’t have time to look at this right now’ … It took about seven or eight nanoseconds (before) I got a call from Meghan — ‘Let’s make a museum. Let’s do this.’ Her energy was just so righteous, I just believed what she was saying, and I stopped right there and didn’t go any further. That was it.”

Zabrucky’s success as a prop maker came at the expense of his art, although he continues to work on large, striking pieces made from brass, aluminum and carbon steel and oftentimes expressing a strong anti-war sentiment.

The boy so enamored with the future has a far more pessimistic view of it at age 76.

In the same complex where Zabrucky’s warehouse is located, he said, “In that third space — no signage, no indication anything is going on there that you would ever have a clue — is a company that makes robotic dogs that have built-in, high-caliber machine guns. It’s pretty damn creepy, and it’s right next to my studio in San Fernando … That’s not Rockwell or General Dynamics, that’s a 5,000-square-foot warehouse with a few geniuses in there trying to sell the government what they think is the best four-legged robots with built-in machine guns. What are they going to do with that thing?”

It’s like something out of a science fiction movie.