Liberace’s Valley House from “Behind the Candelabra”

As I mentioned last month in my post about Sherman Way Adult Books from Behind the Candelabra (which you can read here), back in May fellow stalker E.J., of the Movieland Directory website, challenged me to find several locales from the HBO biopic including the L.A.-area home belonging to Liberace (Michael Douglas).  It was never made entirely clear where exactly in Los Angeles the house was meant to be located in the flick, but I believe that it was supposed to the pianist’s San Fernando Valley-area residence in Sherman Oaks.  (I blogged about Liberace’s real life former Valley dwelling, with the piano-shaped pool, in 2010.  You can read that post here).

Fortunately, this location turned out to be a very easy find thanks to an address number of “4238” that was visible on the home’s mailbox in the scene in which Scott Thorson (Matt Damon) lamented to his friend Bob Black (Scott Bakula) that Liberace wanted him to have plastic surgery.  I had an inkling that the number was not faked for the movie (despite its gold coloring), so I started searching 4200 blocks in various Los Angeles neighborhoods for the one-story, 70s-style ranch house.  I fairly quickly came across an area known as View Park-Windsor Hills that had a plethora of ranch-style properties, one of which – at 4238 Olympiad Drive – turned out to be the right place.  So I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to stalk it two weekends ago while the two of us were in L.A.

I was absolutely FLOORED to discover, while driving there, that the home was located right off of Stocker Street.    Um, LOVE IT!

And I was even more floored to see that the mailbox and address placard that appeared in the movie were also there in real life.

Liberace’s L.A. house showed up several times in Behind the Candelabra.

As you can see below, the residence looks pretty much exactly the same in person as it did onscreen.

The home’s backyard and pool were also utilized in the filming.

As you can see in the Google aerial view pictured below, the slide that appeared in Behind the Candelabra is also there in real life.  So incredibly cool!

I am 99.9% certain that several areas of the residence’s actual interior, including the dining room, kitchen, living room, and den, were also used in the movie, but I could not find any photographs of the inside of the home with which to verify that hunch.

In real life, the 1957 house features three bedrooms, three baths, 2,824 square feet of living space, and a 0.23-acre plot of land.

Before tracking down the dwelling, I had been completely unaware of the View Park-Windsor Hills neighborhood, but once I arrived there, it was easy to see why the residence and area were chosen to be used in Behind the Candelabra.  The suburb looks like it has not been touched since the 1970s.  Walking among the homes made me feel as if I had stepped into an episode of The Brady Bunch – but in a good way.

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Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Liberace’s Valley house from Behind the Candelabra is located at 4238 Olympiad Drive in the View Park-Windsor Hills area of Los Angeles.  Supposedly, Ike and Tina Turner once lived just down the road at 4263 Olympiad Drive.

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