Boris Karloff’s Former Home

The Haunting of Hill House is giving me life right now!  To say I am obsessed with the spooky new Netflix original series would be an understatement.  I am currently only five episodes in (so no spoilers please!), but am absolutely mesmerized by the storyline, the characters, the actors (it is amazing how much the child stars resemble their adult counterparts!), and the locations.  Sadly, it was filmed in Georgia (the eponymous house is actually Bisham Manor in LaGrange), so I won’t be stalking its locales anytime soon, but when I brought the show up to my grandma recently, she mentioned that the most frightening movie she had ever seen was the original Frankenstein, starring Boris Karloff as The Monster.  She first watched the 1931 classic as a child and said it absolutely terrified her and still does to this day.  The conversation reminded me that I had stalked Karloff’s former residence a few years back, but had failed to blog about it.  I learned about the pad thanks to my friend Scott Michaels’ 2013 article for Discover L.A. titled “The 13 Scariest Places in Los Angeles,” in which he wrote, “Frankenstein’s monster thespian Boris Karloff was a gentleman who had a passion for gardening.  He was especially proud of his rose garden.  Legend has it that several of Karloff’s friends willed their cremains to him, so they could permanently reside in his rose bed.”  So the actor who played what is arguably moviedom’s most famous monster supposedly buried the ashes of multiple friends in his yard?  There couldn’t be a more appropriate locale for my Haunted Hollywood posts!  I honestly don’t know how the place sat in my stalking backlog for so long.  Thank you, Grandma, for reminding me about it!

Though I was most interested in the 1927 Spanish-style hacienda thanks to its Karloff connection, it turns out that the property’s macabre history dates back prior to his ownership.  In July 1923, the place was leased by Katharine Hepburn, who had just won a role in A Bill of Divorcement which prompted a move from the East Coast to the West.  Per the book Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites, written by my buddy E.J. from The Movieland Directory, she lived in the dwelling with best friend, actress Eve March, and a family maid.  All soon became convinced the pad, most notably the pool apartment, was haunted.  E.J. writes, “One night March watched the door latch open and close by itself, and the next day Hepburn and March watched a ghostly man walk from the pool into the apartment, closing the door behind him.  The first time Hepburn’s younger brother Richard stayed overnight, he told her that a young man stood over his bed all night staring down at him.  He was too afraid to move until sunrise.”  Because of the hauntings, Katharine did not stay on the premises long, moving out in 1934 at which point Karloff (real name William Henry Pratt) moved in with his wife, Dorothy.

The property quickly became his paradise.  During his tenure, Boris kept a menagerie of animals on the grounds including a tortoise, ducks, chickens, six dogs, a cow, a parrot, and a 400-pound pig named Violet.  In the book Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: The Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration, author Gregory William Mank says, “For Karloff, home was his Mexican farmhouse — a bizarre aerie, high amidst the oak trees and honeysuckle of Coldwater Canyon, in the mountains above Beverly Hills.  Twenty-three twenty Bowmont Drive, with its pool and beautiful, rambling gardens, previously had been the address of Katharine Hepburn.  The actress sincerely believed a ghost haunted the house, moving the furniture, jiggling the latch on Ms. Hepburn’s bedroom door and looming over the guest bed — so terrifying Hepburn’s brother Richard that he couldn’t sleep ‘one single night’ during his visit.  After Kate’s friend Laura Harding tried to have her dogs ferret out the ghost — to no avail — Hepburn vacated, and Boris and Dorothy had moved into the haunted hacienda in the spring of 1934.  ‘We felt rather sorry for the ghost,’ said Laura Harding — after all, the spirit had likely met its match in the star who’d played Frankenstein’s Monster!  Perhaps Boris scared away the ghost, or maybe they were kindred spirits, for the star loved his ‘little farm.’”

Indeed he did.  Dorothy and Boris created an oasis at the home, which at the time boasted a sprawling 2.5 acres of land, planting laurel and eucalyptus trees (which still line the property to this day), farming a massive fruit orchard, landscaping a rambling lawn, and cultivating a plethora of terraced gardens including a large rose garden with more than 20 varieties of the flower.  It is there that Karloff is said to have sprinkled the remains of more than one friend, which I can presume only added to the hauntings.  As Mank relayed to the Los Angeles Times in 1995, Boris buried “under the roses the cremated remains of old stock-company cronies whose last wish was to rest in their now-famous friend'”‘”‘s Eden.”  A supremely bizarre request, especially considering the actor’s horror background, but I guess the heart wants what the heart wants.

Karloff lived on the premises until his divorce from Dorothy in 1946.  The majority of the land surrounding the hacienda was subsequently subdivided, leaving behind a much smaller 0.95-acre lot.  Today, the pad boasts 5 bedrooms, 6 baths, 4,984 square feet, white-washed masonry walls, tile and hardwood flooring throughout, beamed ceilings, multiple patios and courtyards, a whopping SIX fireplaces including one outside, an exterior pizza oven, a chef’s kitchen, a pool, maid’s quarters, a wine cellar, a bar, a library, a tiled staircase, a den, and a sun room.  The residence, which you can see photos of here, is absolutely exquisite!  It very closely resembles the La Quinta Resort & Club, at least how the hotel looked prior to its recent (and unfortunate) remodel.  Sadly, outside of the front gate and garage (pictured below via Google Street View), virtually none of the estate is visible from the road.  (Because the latter is situated quite a distance up from the former, I did not realize it was part of the Karloff residence when I was stalking the place and failed to snap photos of it.)

As I’ve said before, though, that’s why God created aerial views.

Several other stars have called the Bowmont pad home over the years, including rocker Eric Burdon, who also reportedly moved out due to the hauntings, and director Gottfried Reinhardt.  Per The Movieland Directory, producer Leland Hayward and his wife, actress Margaret Sullavan, lived on the premises at one point, as well.  But the home’s storied pedigree doesn’t end there!  Realtor Elaine Young told People magazine in 1991 that the property, which she was responsible for leasing out during the many years it belonged to Producers Studio head Fred Jordan, has a “quasi-demonic history.”  LOVE IT.  Young says, “Donovan [Leitch] leased it and did something to the toilet paper rack.  Elliott Gould leased it and threw the furniture in the pool.  Everybody did something.”  Jordon sold to Frasier actress Peri Gilpin in 2003 who subsequently sold to Friends writers/producers Scott Silveri and Shana Goldberg-Meehan in 2007.  Per Yolanda’s Little Black Book, the abode is currently owned by producer John Goldwyn and his husband Jeffrey Klein, who bought it for $7.3 million in 2015.  Despite the multiple changes of hand, the dwelling apparently remains largely in its original state because in Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, Mank writes, “ . . . a recent owner relates that a late-in-life Katharine Hepburn (who died in 2003) suddenly appeared one day without warning, mysteriously dressed in black and inspecting the house and grounds.  ‘Well,’ said Hepburn to the owner, ‘I’m glad to see you haven’t f*cked the place up!’”

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Big THANK YOU to Scott Michaels, of the Find A Death website, for writing about this location and to my Grandma for reminding me of it! 

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Boris Karloff’s former house is located at 2320 Bowmont Drive in Beverly Crest.

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