Celebrity Homes – Page 3

August 20, 2013August 19, 2013

Lindsay Lohan’s Former Venice Home

I had originally planned on writing about a different location for today’s post, but last night, when the Grim Cheaper and I sat down to watch Oprah Winfrey interview Lindsay Lohan on Oprah’s Next Chapter, I was reminded of a LiLo locale that I had stalked last November – the Venice Beach house where the troubled star lived for about a year in 2011 following a 90-day stint at the Betty Ford Center. And I just have to say here that the Oprah interview (which was best summed up in this Entertainment Weekly article written by Lanford Beard) was not only thoroughly disappointing and disheartening, but seemed entirely contrived. As someone who is quite familiar with addiction (I helped a loved one through a years-long rehab process), it did not seem to me that Lindsay was being at all truthful in the interview. Maybe she just did not want to be truthful in front of the cameras to all of America – which is fine. I just hope that she is being truthful with herself behind the scenes and that she continues to get the help that she so obviously needs. I’m rooting for her.

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Lindsay moved into the ultra-modern, 3,100-square-foot abode, which was originally built in 2007, on January 3rd, 2011. While several sources claim that Lohan purchased the residence, being that Zillow states that the place was last sold in January 2008 (for a cool $2.25 million), a full three years before Lilo moved in, that information is obviously incorrect. Lindsay only ever leased the property, which you can check out some great interior photographs of here, at what was apparently a rate of around $7,100 a month! The pad, which is surprisingly close to the street and easily accessible to paparazzi, boasts 4 bedrooms, 3.5 baths, a two-story main living space, an ironwood patio, a floating stairway, 20-foot-plus high ceilings, poured concrete floors, a forged steel fireplace, two living rooms (‘cause one just isn’t enough), a studio, a ginormous rooftop deck (that Lindsay enclosed with bamboo fencing to keep out prying eyes during her tenure), city and mountain views, mosaic tile work, Viking appliances, European fixtures, mahogany cabinetry, and a private two-car garage.

It also just so happens to be located right next door (we’re talking thisclose) to the mirror-image house where LiLo’s ex, DJ Samantha Ronson, lived at the time. (Sam has since vacated the premises.) Ronson was apparently not very happy about her new neighbor. On Lindsay’s move-in day, she was quoted as saying, “I didn’t plan it this way.” And when a photographer asked her if she had any New Years resolutions, she replied, “No. I’m too pissed off right now.” (You can see some photographs of the interior of Ronson’s house from the time that she lived there, here.)

Samantha wasn’t the only one unhappy about the home’s new occupant. According to a New York Post article, one neighbor was quoted as saying, “Seriously, every time we heard a siren we hoped and prayed it was the police carting her off again and we would be left in peace. It was a nightmare when she was here … [Samantha Ronson] has lived here for ages and she’s never been any drama, she’s very low key and just goes about her business, but Lohan was like a hurricane, or some other natural disaster tearing through the neighborhood.” Yipes!

On January 22nd, shortly after moving into the new house, Lindsay visited nearby jewelry store Kamofie at 1350 Abbot Kinney Boulevard to try on some baubles. She was later accused of stealing a necklace from the store and wound up being charged with violating her probation and was sentenced to 35 days of house arrest at her Venice pad as punishment.

The actress kept herself quite busy while on house arrest, though, and used the Venice pad as a frequent filming location during that time. It was there that Lindsay shot her infamous commercial for penny auction website Beezid.com.

You can watch that commercial by clicking below.

She also posed for the July 2011 issue of Italian Vanity Fair at the house.

And she sat down for an interview for Air New Zealand’s On the Skycouch with Rico at the dwelling.

After Lilo moved out in January 2012, the property was used in an episode of LX.TV Open House (yeah, I’d never heard of it, either Winking smile ).

And while The Huffington Post reports that the Venice residence was featured in an episode of Million Dollar Decorators, that information is actually incorrect. The home that appeared on MDD was actually Lindsay’s Beverly Glen rental (pictured below), which she moved into in 2012.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Lindsay Lohan’s former Venice Beach home is located at 419 Venice Way in Venice. Samantha Ronson’s former home is located right next door at 417 Venice Way.

August 8, 2013August 13, 2013

Copley’s on Palm Canyon – Cary Grant’s Former Guesthouse

One location that I had been chomping at the bit to stalk for what seemed like ages was Copley’s on Palm Canyon – a restaurant created out of what is said to be Cary Grant’s former Palm Springs guest house. Because the eatery does not open until 6 p.m. each night, though (I am nothing if not an early bird), and because it is closed during the scorchingly hot summer months of July and August, I had never had the chance. Until this past May, that is, when the Grim Cheaper and I happened to find ourselves just down the street from Copley’s on a Sunday afternoon at around 5:45 p.m. Thankfully, it only took a little arm twisting to convince him to venture inside for a quick happy hour cocktail. And I am so glad that we did, because the place is simply fabulous!

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Copley’s, which is named after its England-born executive chef, Andrew Manion Copley, first opened its doors in December 2004. Andrew, accompanied by his wife, Juliana, landed in Palm Springs earlier that same year after culinary stints at numerous five-star sites including the Turtle Bay Resort in Oahu (where Forgetting Sarah Marshall was filmed), The Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco, The Park Lane Hotel and The Savoy in London, and The Lodge at Koele at the Four Seasons Resort Lana’i. Upon migrating to Palm Springs, the couple, along with business partner Greg Butterfield, purchased a recently-shuttered Persian restaurant named La Shank House located at what was once supposedly the guest house of Hollywood legend Cary Grant.

As the story goes (and I have, unfortunately, not been able to verify it), Cary purchased the property sometime during the 1940s and proceeded to use it as off-site guest quarters for visiting family and friends, many of whom were Hollywood royalty, through the 1950s. I am not quite sure where in Palm Springs Cary lived during that time period, but I do not believe it was at the so-called “Cary Grant Estate” that I blogged about in July 2011. (He owned that particular home from 1954 to 1972 and it had its own on-site guest quarters.) I did find an article on the CaryGrant.net website that stated that in 1949 Cary and his third wife, Betsy Drake, “spent some time at a tiny place in Palm Springs which Cary used to refer to as ‘The Dump.’” Because the abode was described as “tiny” and therefore most likely did not have room for guests, I am guessing that might be where he lived when he purchased the Copley’s site. Unfortunately though, the website makes no mention of “The Dump’s” exact location. So you know what that means! I’ve got another locale to track down! Is my work here never done?

After purchasing the site, Andrew and Juliana immediately began renovating and restoring the 3,500-square-foot property, which was originally built sometime during the 1920s. During the renovation, which took 64 days to complete, the couple refurbished the estate’s original hardwood flooring, replanted every bit of foliage on the 0.50-acre grounds and transformed the former garden into an outdoor dining area. The result is nothing short of spectacular!

Because we showed up 15 minutes before Copley’s actually opened and they were nice enough to allow us in, we had the place entirely to ourselves. And the super-nice bartender even went so far as to take me on a little tour to explain how the structure was set up when Grant owned it. As you can see below, the indoor dining area is divided by cut-out arched walls. During the Cary Grant days, those walls were filled in, sectioning off the building into several neighboring suites (I think there were a total of five separate suites), all of which opened out to the garden/patio. So the property was essentially like a private mini-hotel. How great would it be to have a place like that to stash visiting family and friends? Love it!

One of the former suite areas is pictured below.

Copley’s definitely does not have the typical restaurant feel to it. Being there is like hanging out at a good friend’s house – well, a rich good friend’s house. And whether or not Cary Grant ever actually owned the place, it was still insanely fun to sit on the patio and sip champagne while imaging that the iconic actor had once done the exact same thing in the exact same spot.

And, bonus! The Grim Cheaper was especially excited to learn that Copley’s offers $5 champagne on its happy hour menu – something that is not at all typical. You can check out the full happy hour menu here.

And while we did not partake of any food while we were there, the dinner menu does look pretty darn uh-ma-zing (the Sesame Seared Tofu has my name written all over it!) and we are looking forward to going back there for a special occasion meal.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Copley’s on Palm Canyon is located at 621 North Palm Canyon Drive in Palm Springs. You can visit the restaurant’s official website here. The eatery only serves dinner and is open each night starting at 6 p.m. The property is closed on Mondays during the month of June and is closed completely from July through August each year.

July 25, 2013December 6, 2013

Bing Crosby’s Palm Desert House – Where JFK Trysted with Marilyn Monroe

Last month, shortly before I headed off to Switzerland, my dad loaned me the book Killing Kennedy, which he had just finished reading. Because there was a chapter devoted to my girl Miss Marilyn Monroe, he thought I might enjoy it. And enjoy it, I did. I could hardly put it down! The chapter about Marilyn focused on the starlet’s first – and most likely only – tryst with the president, which, according to the book, took place the weekend of March 24th, 1962 at the “Spanish-style home of show business legend Bing Crosby” in Palm Springs. Well, believe you me, once I read the words “Marilyn Monroe” and “Palm Springs”, I became hell-bent on tracking down and stalking that house. Unfortunately though, it proved to be quite the difficult find.

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It seems that every book and website that mentions Marilyn’s encounter with JFK sets it at a different Palm Springs-area home of Bing Crosby’s (the crooner owned several desert houses over the course of his lifetime). Most claims state that the tryst took place at Bing’s Thunderbird Country Club residence, which is located at 70375 Calico Road in Rancho Mirage. A December 2012 NBC News article about the then for-sale property even stated, “If the Crosby angle isn’t enough of a celebrity real estate draw, one of the wings of the home is named the Kennedy wing for the presidential visitor that reportedly stayed for a weekend. ‘Robert Kennedy said that Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy stayed a weekend here, so our party named the wing after him,’ [real estate agent Carl] Mitrak explained.” After looking at aerial views of the home, though, and seeing that it was not at all Spanish in style, I became certain that, despite Mitrak’s claims, it was not the right place.

So I started digging further and came across a message board on the Crosby Fan World website on which Crosby biographer Malcolm MacFarlane commented that the Thunderbird Country Club house was, indeed, NOT the spot where Marilyn spent the weekend with JFK. Unfortunately though, no further information was given, so I was still uncertain as to where their encounter actually did take place. And, after stalking Bing’s first desert home at 1011 East El Alameda in Palm Springs (pictured below) and seeing how close it was to the street and neighboring properties and therefore difficult to secure, I quickly ruled it out, as well.

Then fate stepped in. This past Saturday, I happened to mention my quest to the Grim Cheaper’s boss and, amazingly enough, she had the answer for me! She informed me that Marilyn and JFK trysted at Bing Crosby’s Palm Desert estate in Ironwood Country Club. And, as luck would have it, she owns a home inside of the community, which is gated, and granted me access that very afternoon. As you can imagine, I was beyond floored! Unfortunately though, not much of the place, outside of its front gate, is visible from the street.

When I returned home later that day, I did further research and was able to verify that the Ironwood house was indeed the correct spot. As you can see below, the sprawling residence is definitely Spanish in style. You can check out a postcard of what the property looked like back in Bing’s day here.

In the biography Marilyn Monroe: The Final Years, author Keith Badman states “The fact is that Marilyn was intimate with John F. Kennedy only once, during the evening of Saturday 24 March 1962, when both he and the screen actress were guests at singer Bing Crosby’s three-bedroom house in Palm Springs and the adjoining, remote conclave home belonging to songwriter Jimmy Van Heusen and writer Bill Morrow. The houses, situated in a tiny community 100 miles southeast of Los Angeles, stood against a mountain in Palm Desert at a place called Silver Spur and were situated up a single dirt thoroughfare named Van Heusen Road. They had been a favourite of former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his men during his tenure.”

To further verify Badman’s claims, according to Peter Lawford (as quoted in the Sinatra biography His Way by Kitty Kelley), while JFK and Marilyn stayed at Bing’s pad, the secret service stayed next door at Jimmy Van Heusen’s abode. That house is located at 49300 Della Robbia Lane and is denoted with a pink arrow below. You can check out a 1960s-era photograph of both Bing and Van Heusen’s properties here.

The Silver Spur area was later absorbed by Ironwood Country Club. A 2012 MyDesert.com article states, “Bing Crosby’s estate that was initially part of neighboring Silver Spur Ranch is now part of Ironwood.”

Today, the property, which was recently remodeled and is currently available as a vacation rental, boasts a three-bedroom main house, two guest casitas with two bedrooms each, 2.5 acres of land, a saltwater pool, a Jacuzzi, a fully-lit tennis court, mountain views, and original Bing Crosby decor.

My favorite aspect of the property, though, has the be the sign outside which reads “The Crosby Estate.” LOVE IT!

I also love the fact that Ironwood embraced its celebrity history by naming two of the community’s streets “JFK Trail” and “Crosby Lane.” So incredibly cool!

And I was extremely excited to discover that the residence is also a filming location! In Season 1, Episode 7 of the reality series Hollywood Exes, the women spend the weekend at The Crosby Estate and discuss the fact that JFK and MM trysted there. Hollywood Exes is terrible by the way! I feel significantly dumber just from having scanned through it to make screen captures for this post!

The interior of the house was also shown in the episode.

As was the pool area.

And the property’s front gates.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Bing Crosby’s former home, where Marilyn Monroe is said to have trysted with President Kennedy, is located at 49400 Della Robbia Lane in Palm Desert. The estate is located inside of Ironwood Country Club, a gated community, and is only accessible to residents and guests of residents, unfortunately. You can check out the property’s vacation rental website – with fabulous interior photographs – here.

May 31, 2013May 31, 2013

Liberace’s Third Palm Springs House

Shortly after moving to the desert back in January, I took my dad to a doctor appointment and, while in the waiting room, happened to pick up the November 2012 issue of Palm Springs Life magazine. It turned out to be a fortuitous choice because in it was an article titled “Living With Liberace” about a recently-remodeled Old Las Palmas-area residence that had once been owned by the legendary pianist. The article, of course, piqued my interest, but, let me tell you, I just about fell out of my chair when I read that the property’s new owners, accountant Garth Gilpin and his wife, doctor Elizabeth Smalley, originally hailed from Pasadena, the city that I had just migrated from! I decided I had to stalk the home as soon as possible – especially considering all of the hoopla that was then (and is still now) surrounding the recently filmed HBO biopic Behind the Candelabra (which finally aired this past Sunday) – and I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to do just that a few days later.

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Liberace, who was born Wladziu Valentino Liberace and who was at one time the world’s highest-paid pianist, purchased the one-story desert dwelling on North Kaweah Road in 1968. It was his third Palm Springs home. Lee, as he was known to his friends, actually owned six Coachella Valley-area properties throughout his lifetime (including one that he purchased for his mother and another that he purchased for his brother). Of his penchant for buying residences, he said, “Some people collect stamps, I like to collect real estate. I am a firm believer in the good earth.”

During Liberace’s years there, the four-bedroom, five-bath, 3,101-square-foot abode, which was originally constructed in 1952 and sits on a 0.33-acre plot of land, was decorated in a French Provincial style and boasted a Louis XIV room and a large fountain. According to the Palm Springs Life article, Mr. Showmanship would play his piano nightly, much to the joy of his neighbors, and each Halloween, would pass out silver dollars, much to the joy of local trick-or-treaters. Garth told the magazine that the man who formerly lived next door (he has since passed away), would share anecdotes of Lee’s time on North Kaweah, saying “He told us how Liberace would come over in the mornings, in his bathrobe, and go into his icebox and chow down on his fried chicken leftovers. Then at night he’d hear him playing the piano. It’s such a great Palm Springs story, isn’t it? ‘I lived next door and got to hear Liberace playing the piano for free.’”

Liberace purchased his final desert residence, which was named The Cloisters (you can read my blog post on it here), in 1967. It was in disarray at the time and the pianist immediately began a long restoration process, to the tune of $136,000, while still living on North Kaweah Road. He finally moved into The Cloisters in 1972, at which point he offloaded the Kaweah property.

When the Kaweah house was put on the market in 2009, it boasted a price tag of $995,000 and was in quite a state, as you can see below. There are quite simply no words for the monstrosity that the interior had become. Wait, I take that back. There are words. Two of them, in fact. Hot mess!

Shockingly, the extravagant décor was not a leftover from Liberace’s days, but was the brainchild of the home’s then owner who was apparently a huge fan of both Mr. Showmanship and Elvis. You can check out additional photographs of the residence’s unique interior on its real estate listing here.

Garth and Elizabeth wound up buying the property in May 2010 for $625,000. Of their first tour of the dwelling – a viewing which rendered the couple “speechless” – Elizabeth says, “There were painted cherubs on the ceiling, a room that was Dalmatian and cow print, fake flowers, red velvet, gold, with Elvis and Liberace everywhere. It was the most dysfunctional house we’ve ever seen. Nonetheless, we thought, how can we not do this?” Shortly after purchasing the residence, they hired designer Christopher Kennedy to help them “honor and respect Liberace’s original vision without, you know, recreating it” and “to make it feel Liberace without looking Liberace.” You can see the result – which is fabulous – on the Palm Springs Life website here. Hard to believe it’s the same house as the one shown in the photos above!

Thankfully, subtle reminders of the pad’s famous former owner were left on the exterior of the property, as well, including music notes on the front gates.

And a piano-shaped mailbox, which I fell in love with!

The house is even named “Piazza di Liberace” and bears a sign informing visitors of that fact. Love it!

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Liberace’s third desert home is located at 1441 North Kaweah Road in the Old Las Palmas section of Palm Springs.

April 19, 2013April 18, 2013

Dick Clark’s Former Malibu Home

Last June, my Grandma sent me an article about legendary television personality Dick Clark’s former Flintstones-style Malibu home, calling it “unbelievable” and asking if I could track it down and stalk it. One look at the photographs of the cave-like structure, which had recently been put on the market, and I was in! And while I did manage to track it down right away, it was not until a couple of weeks ago that I finally got around to stalking it. And I just have to say here that my Grandma, who is 88, never ceases to amaze me! I called her one evening back in January while on my way home from a SAG screening and she asked which stars, if any, I had gotten a photograph with. When I told her Robert De Niro and “an actor you probably haven’t heard of named Bradley Cooper”, she replied, “Of course I know who Bradley Cooper is! He was People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive last year.” I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree! Or grand-tree in this case.

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Dick Clark’s former home is located at the far northern end of Malibu, past the Ventura County Line, at the top of a very windy and steep road. It is situated so far up the road, in fact, that in driving there I wound up above the fog line, as you can see below! It was uncanny to witness! As my photographs of Neptune’s Net show, the weather was extremely overcast along the Pacific Coast Highway that particular morning, but up by Dick’s house, skies were clear and blue.

I was disheartened to learn, as I arrived at the property, that very little of it was visible from the street.

It wasn’t until I started back down the hill towards the PCH that I spotted a faraway glimpse of the structure.

The small, one-bedroom, two-bath residence was custom-built for Dick and his wife, Kari, although, for the life of me, I cannot figure out when. I searched through historic aerial views, but was only able to ascertain that the property was built sometime between 1980 and 2005. Anyway, at some point, “the oldest teenager” purchased a 23-acre plot of land adjacent to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Center and set about building a house there. The National Park Service objected to the plans, though, so architect Phillip Jon Brown came up with a design for a dwelling that looked like a rock formation in order to appease the group. His idea worked and the Clarks were given the go-ahead. The incredibly unique result is pictured below. According to a March 2012 CNN.com article, Brown created the home’s exterior out of stucco and loose rock. Of the process, he said, “When it was still wet, we scrubbed in to expose some of the stones. That made it look like decomposed granite.”

The house boasts very few straight lines, which would make it hard to hang any artwork. With views like those pictured below, though, who needs artwork?

According to the CNN.com article, the curved walls were constructed out of wood and steel beams and then covered over with concrete.

I absolutely love the openness of the residence and all of its indirect lighting.

I could do without the kitchen . . .

. . . and the bathroom, though. And while I don’t know that I’d ever want to live there, I’d give pretty much anything to see the place in person.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Big THANK YOU to my Grandma for asking me to stalk this one!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Dick Clark’s former home is located at 10124 Pacific View Road in Malibu.

April 5, 2013April 4, 2013

Shannen Doherty’s Former Mulholland Drive Rental

Another locale that I found thanks to Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites, the fabulous book written by my buddy E.J. of The Movieland Directory, was the house at 13459 Mulholland Drive that was once rented by my girl Shannen Doherty and that was also the location of her ill-fated 1993 nuptials to Ashley Hamilton, son of actor George Hamilton. Well, believe you me, as soon as I read the words “Shannen Doherty”, I immediately added the address to my To-Stalk list and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there a couple of weekends ago while visiting L.A.

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Sadly, not much of the abode, which was originally built in 1949 and boasts three bedrooms, four baths, 3,734 square feet, and a 0.50-acre plot of land, is visible from the street.

You can see a very small bit of the property, which, according to Zillow, last sold in August 1997 for $942,500, if you head a few hundred feet east on Mulholland Drive.

I was excited to see the home’s front gate, though, as a photograph of it had been featured in the October 11th, 1993 issue of People Magazine in an article about Shannen and Ashley’s “secret” wedding.

That photograph is pictured below. In a disappointing twist, the gate has since been remodeled and now looks completely different than it did in 1993, so much so that I thought E.J. might have gotten Shannen’s former address wrong. (I know, I know – blasphemy! ) As you can see, though, the number “13459” is clearly visible in the People Magazine image, and the article, which you can read here, goes on to state that the star’s home was located on Mulholland Drive. Why, oh why, would the owners remodel the gate? Ugh! (On a fairly amazing side-note – People failed to recognize actress Meredith Salenger in the photograph below, calling her an “unidentified guest”. Nice reporting and research skills, People. Meredith was a pretty big star at the time, so how the magazine failed to identify her is beyond me.)

I’ve recognized her twice while out in public! Maybe I should go work for People.

Shannen moved into the Mulholland home at some point after being evicted from her Doheny Drive rental (which I blogged about here) in March 1993. And it was there that, on September 24th, the star married Ashley, who at the time was six days short of turning 19. The wedding took place on a Friday evening and, according to People, Shannen reported to the set of Beverly Hills, 90210 that morning as if it was a normal day. During a break, she asked someone from the art department to come over to her house that afternoon to help her decorate her backyard for her wedding. When the crew member expressed shock at the spontaneousness of the nuptials, Shannen said, “Yeah, I just found out this morning.” The bride wore a silk bathrobe and no shoes during the ceremony, which was decorated with sunflowers and tiki torches and was attended by only a few close friends. Not surprisingly, the marriage did not last. The couple was separated by February 1994 and in April Shannen filed for divorce. The two had only known each other for two weeks at the time of their nuptials and Ashley had just been released from a drug rehabilitation program shortly beforehand. Not the best of circumstances for the start of a successful marriage, but you live and you learn, right? In a November 1994 TV Guide article, Shannen said, “It was me jumping into something very, very fast before I knew someone. I think it was more of – I needed to feel love. And I loved him, because I think his heart was very, very good. However, there were things about him that I didn’t find out until we were married. Things I couldn’t overlook. And it was one of the most unhealthy relationships I’ve ever been in.”

I am fairly certain that Shannen did not live in the Mulholland rental for more than a year. In an August 1995 Sky Magazine article, in which she was dubbed a “compulsive house-mover”, she talks about her new Spanish-style abode in the Hollywood Hills (one that I have yet to track down!) and says, “I have a problem with staying in one place too long.”

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker E.J., of The Movieland Directory website, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Shannen Doherty’s former rental is located at 13459 Mulholland Drive in Beverly Hills.

March 21, 2013March 20, 2013

Loretta Young’s Former West Hollywood House

Once I discovered that Loretta Young’s Palm Springs house (which I blogged about on Tuesday) was not, in fact, the place where Judy Lewis (the legendary actress’ secret love child with Clark Gable) learned the truth about her birth, I set out to track down the location where the encounter actually did take place. And thanks to Judy’s fascinating 1994 biography, Uncommon Knowledge, that endeavor was a snap.

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A woman obviously after my own heart, Judy named each chapter of her book after the street she lived on during the corresponding time period of her life. Um, LOVE it! The chapter chronicling the years 1955 to 1958 is titled “The Flores House” and, thankfully, featured a photograph (pictured below) of the front of Judy’s former abode in which an address number of 1308 was visible. From there I looked at the Google Street View image of the residence located at 1308 North Flores Street and, voila, it was the same residence pictured in Uncommon Knowledge. Thank you, Judy! So I ran right out to stalk the place while the Grim Cheaper and I were visiting L.A. this past weekend. (As you can see below, the exterior of the property still looks almost exactly the same today as it did when Judy lived there almost six decades ago.)

There seems to be quite a bit of misinformation about the dwelling floating around online, most of which states that it was specifically built for Loretta in 1927. While the original construction does indeed date back to 1927, it was not until 1952 that Loretta and her then husband, Tom Lewis, purchased the site, which at the time was actually an upscale apartment complex consisting of “two-storied maisonettes with individual private gardens”, from millionaire Huntington Hartford. The couple planned on using part of the property as a family home while renting out the remaining units for income. Loretta’s mother, Gladys Belzer, who was one of the most sought-after interior decorators in all of Los Angeles at the time, and famed architect John Elgin Woolf immediately began an extensive renovation of the site and the family moved into a leased beach house in Santa Monica (one that had formerly belonged to Harry Warner at 605 Pacific Coast Highway) while waiting for their new home to be completed.

The family finally moved into the Flores house sometime in 1955. Of the residence, Judy said, “Grandma had done a superb job of redesigning and redecorating. Our house had white-marble floors in the entry and black marble in the atrium; the ceilings were high and the rooms flooded in sunlight. Word spread rapidly and the maisonettes were occupied by members of the movie community, Joan Crawford and Rod Steiger among the first tenants.” Rock Hudson also supposedly lived on the premises at one point in time. The Flores residence boasted five bedrooms, four baths, 6,000 square feet of living space, several fireplaces, a formal dining room, high ceilings, hardwood flooring, separate maid’s quarters (natch!), a pool, and a pool house. According to fave book Hollywood: The Movie Lover’s Guide, Loretta sold the property sometime during the 1970s to actress Alexis Smith and her husband Craig Stevens.

As you can see in the below photographs from Uncommon Knowledge as compared to photographs from the property’s 2008 MLS listing, the living room area, with its built-it bookshelves, still looks much the same today as it did when Judy lived there.

The doors that Loretta famously twirled through each week on her wildly popular television series The Loretta Young Show were based upon the actual living room doors of the Flores Street house. So incredibly cool!

Judy learned of her secret heritage while visiting her mother at the Flores house during Labor Weekend 1966, six years after Clark Gable’s death. She confronted Loretta late one night in the actress’ opulent bedroom and before begrudgingly admitting the truth – that Judy was in fact her biological daughter with the “King of Hollywood” – Loretta went into the bathroom and threw up. After finally learning the real story, Judy said, “A feeling of utter relief went through me. It was as if I had been holding my breath for the past several hours and suddenly I could breathe again. Finally all doubts were gone, I had a name and a face and an identity to the other missing half of myself. I had known that my mother was my birth mother for years, even though we had never discussed it, but the mystery of my father was finally solved. Now I knew definitively once and for all that I was really Clark Gable’s daughter. I almost laughed with relief. It had been such a long and difficult journey to get to this moment. And now, finally, after all these years, I was past it, on the other side – a whole person.” When Judy published Uncommon Knowledge in 1994, Loretta publicly denied her daughter’s claims and it was not until three months after her own death in August 2000, when her authorized biography, Forever Young, was released, that Loretta finally admitted the truth – from beyond the grave. It is a heartbreaking story from beginning to end and I cannot even imagine the pain that Judy endured throughout her lifetime.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Loretta Young’s longtime former home is located at 1308 North Flores Street in West Hollywood. Note – Loretta’s former address is also sometimes listed as 8313 Fountain Avenue in West Hollywood.

February 26, 2013December 6, 2013

Louis B. Mayer’s Former House – The Birthplace of the Academy Awards

Last week, the Grim Cheaper emailed me a fabulous Vanity Fair article about the genesis of the most iconic night in Hollywood – the Academy Awards. According to the blurb, in January 1927, legendary producer Louis B. Mayer was enjoying some idle conversation with friends Conrad Nagel and Fred Niblo at his beachfront home when the idea to form an elite club of fellow movie-industry moguls struck him. The article states, “Their flight of fancy—and what some might call anti-union maneuvering—swiftly took wing. The following week three dozen studio stalwarts attended a brainstorming dinner at L.A.’s Ambassador Hotel. By May, Mayer, Douglas Fairbanks, and eight others were addressing several hundred in black-tie and ball gowns at Hollywood’s Biltmore Hotel. Fairbanks presented the big picture, Mayer hit them up for $100 a head, and, lo and behold, they had forged an academy (Nagel’s term) of cinema’s elite. Little did L. B. Mayer suspect that two years later his simple notion would spawn a splendid offshoot: the first Academy Awards dinner dance, held on May 16, 1929, in the Blossom Room of the Roosevelt Hotel.” Well, as you can imagine, once I read those words, I was immediately itching to track down the house where it all began. As it turns out, the property is one I know quite well and had read about in countless books over the years – the infamous Peter Lawford beach house in Santa Monica where my girl Marilyn Monroe is rumored to have trysted with both John F. Kennedy and his brother, Bobby, back in the 1960s. So I dragged the GC right on out to stalk the place this past weekend while in L.A.

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Because there are numerous conflicting reports about the residence’s history online, I contacted my buddy E.J., from the Movieland Directory website , to give me the lowdown. According to him, the 6,416-square-foot abode was commissioned in 1926 by Mayer, who had purchased an empty ocean-side tract of land known as Rancho San Vicente the year prior. He employed MGM art director Cedric Gibbons to design the Mediterranean-style dwelling and utilized studio electricians, artisans and carpenters to construct it. The home was completed in an astonishing six weeks time, by April 18, 1926, with builders literally working around the clock to finish. Floodlights were brought in so that the laborers could continue to ply away through the night and, according to E.J., Mayer’s children would often head down to the beach to watch the spectacle.

The property, which cost $26,000 to construct, featured a gatekeeper’s apartment, 13 onyx bathrooms, wood-beamed ceilings, wrought-iron balconies, foot-thick exterior walls to keep the interior cool during the summer, a pool, and a projection room with a movie screen that rose from the floor. Legend has it that the first screening of Gone with the Wind took place in that projection room.

Oh, and did I mention the views?

Louis B. Mayer moved out of the home upon separating from his wife, Margaret, in 1944. She later took over ownership of the property, the front of which is pictured below, through the divorce settlement. In 1956, the residence was purchased by British-born actor Peter Lawford and his wife, Patricia Kennedy, for $95,000. JFK would often visit his sister and brother-in-law at the beach house, which became a sort of den of ill repute with Lawford throwing parties and lining up call-girls, starlets and models for the then Senator and later President to rendezvous with. One of those starlets was, of course, Marilyn Monroe. Jack stayed on the premises, which at the time was located on a private, gated road, so often during his presidency that the place became known as the Western White House. And it was there that Marilyn was set to have dinner on the final night of her life, August 4th, 1962, but she wound up declining the invite at the last minute. Much speculation has surrounded the happenings at the house on that particular evening, the most truthful of which, in my opinion, is chronicled in the fabulous book The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe.

In 1974, while working on the Pussy Cats album, John Lennon, Ringo Star and Paul McCartney all lived at the beach house. In fact, the last known photograph of John and Paul was taken on the premises. According to E.J., Warren Beatty also owned the property at one point in time and it was once rented by Led Zeppelin, as well. The historic home was last sold in October 1978 for $862,000.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Louis B. Mayer’s former home, aka the birthplace of the Academy Awards, is located at 625 Palisades Beach Road (or Pacific Coast Highway) in Santa Monica. The beach side of the house can easily be viewed by parking in the lot located near 480 Pacific Coast Highway and walking just a few hundred feet south.

November 28, 2012June 19, 2017

Merv Griffin’s Former House – and Some Big News!

The Grim Cheaper and I had a fabulous time in Palm Springs last week celebrating Thanksgiving with my parents – so much so that we have decided to move there permanently! We have been seriously considering a move to the Desert for a few months now, but finally decided to pull the trigger while driving back to Pasadena last Saturday afternoon and called up our landlord to officially give our 60 days notice. While I will miss my beloved L.A. more than words can express, I think our being in the desert will do wonders for my dad’s health (not to mention my poor mom’s sanity). The fact that our new apartment (which we LOVE) is half the price of our current apartment – and twice the size! – AND features a HUGE walk-in closet only sweetens the deal. (My current closet situation is absolutely pitiful, but I digress.) And not to worry, my fellow stalkers, my blog is not going anywhere. We own a condo in Santa Monica that is only rented out part time and we will be staying in it whenever it is free so that I will be able to stalk. IAMNOTASTALKER is most-definitely here to stay, I promise. And now, on with the post!

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A couple of months ago, my mom mentioned that she had seen a real estate listing for Merv Griffin’s former 39-acre estate in La Quinta. The listing did not cite an address, though, and my mom was desperate for me to track the place down because she could not imagine where an almost forty-acre property could possibly be located in the LQ. Thankfully, I was able to find the abode fairly quickly via a Google search and, as it turns out, the pad is pretty darn close to my parents’ house. So I dragged the GC right on out to stalk the place Thanksgiving morning.

Merv, who had been a frequent Desert visitor in the past, purchased the land for his La Quinta estate while in town for a tennis tournament sometime during the 1980s. According to a 2006 Palm Springs Life article, he said, “I looked around and thought this would be a great place to bring my horses. I bought the first and only 80-acre parcel I saw. It was a disaster — nothing but sand, cactus, a little old motel, and a small lake. My son asked me, ‘What are you going to do with this?’ And I said, ‘See if I can make Kentucky out of it.’” Griffin bought up several adjacent plots of land in the following years, eventually amassing a whopping 240-acre compound. He built a private home for himself on the site in 1986 and the surrounding acreage was transformed into Griffin Ranch, an exclusive equestrian-themed gated community that formally opened in 2007. And while the Ranch was originally expected to feature 393 custom estates, according to Brad Schmett’s La Quinta real estate website, new construction was halted in 2009 and the fate of future development there is currently unknown.

Griffin’s ginormous Moroccan-style residence was inspired in part by clothing designer Yves Saint Laurent’s home in Marrakech, which Merv claims to have once snuck into while on a visit to Morocco (a man after my own heart, I swear ). He commissioned famed interior decorator Waldo Fernandez (who is/was the go-to designer for such stars as Elizabeth Taylor, Sean Connery, and Jennifer Aniston and who handled the 1980s remodel of the Beverly Hills Hotel, which was also owned by Griffin at the time) to style the interior. Sadly, Merv’s home was gutted in an electrical fire in 1987, not long after it was first constructed, and had to be completely rebuilt.

Griffin’s former estate, not much of which is visible from the road, is nothing short of spectacular, as you can see in the aerial views below. In fact, when I first saw the below images I thought I was looking at a resort! The estate boasts a 5,483-square-foot main house with a 2000-square-foot living room, retractable dome skylight, 20-foot ceilings, and two master suites with Moroccan-style steam showers. The property also features four detached circular-shaped casitas, a 1,712-square-foot guest house (with three bedrooms and two baths!), separate staff quarters, an equestrian center with a 16-stall stable, a barn, a regulation-sized racetrack (apparently the only one in the entire Coachella Valley), an infinity pool, and a 2.5-acre(!) pond complete with a swan paddle boat.

Upon Griffin’s passing in 2007, the home became a vacation rental and was then put up for sale this past March for a whopping $14.5 million. It was relisted in June for $9.5 million and appears to still be on the market today.

Thanks to fave website The Real Estalker, I learned that Griffin’s former house is also a filming location! The dwelling was where Slade Smiley and Gretchen Rossi vacationed with Gretchen’s parents, Brenda and Scott, in the Season 5 episode of The Real Housewives of Orange County titled “Let’s Bow Our Heads and Pray”.

Um, can you say “product placement”?

The interior of the home was also shown in the episode.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Merv Griffin’s former house is located at 81345 Avenue 54 in La Quinta.

October 12, 2012September 29, 2017

The Home Where Marvin Gaye Was Killed

Way back in January, while on a stalking adventure with Mike, from MovieShotsLA, he took me by the West Adams-area home where, on April 1st, 1984, singer Marvin Gaye Jr. was shot and killed by his father, Marvin Gay Sr. (and no, gay is not a typo – Marvin Jr. added an e to his surname early on in his career). Mike thought the location would fit in perfectly with my annual Haunted Hollywood theme and, while I adamantly agreed, that unfortunately meant that I had to wait over ten months to blog about the place. So without further ado, here goes . . . finally!

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Marvin Gaye Jr.’s former home, which was originally built in 1905, was designed by Sumner Hunt, who also designed the Thomas W. Phillips residence, aka The People Under the Stairs house, that I blogged about yesterday. Marvin Jr., who had found massive success thanks to such hits as “Let’s Get It On”, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”, “What’s Going On”, and “Sexual Healing”, purchased the large Tudor-style dwelling in 1975 for $30,500, but, due to issues with drugs and a dire financial situation, wound up having to quit-claim the property to his parents just a year and a half later.

As the story goes, in late 1983, Marvin Jr. moved back into the home following the end of his U.S. tour. The singer was not in good shape. At the time, he was suffering from extreme depression, cocaine addiction, suicidal tendencies, and severe paranoia. Convinced that someone was trying to kill him, he had even taken to wearing a bulletproof vest when not onstage. And, according to this article, at one press conference he announced that he had been poisoned by an unknown individual and then later saved by an antidote potion that had been created by comedian Dick Gregory. Um, OK.

At about 11 a.m. on April 1st, 1984, Marvin Jr. got into an argument with his father, who was a Pentecostal minister and with whom he had always had a stormy relationship, in an upstairs bedroom of the house. The argument quickly escalated and got physical, resulting in Marvin Sr. grabbing a .38-caliber pistol and shooting his son twice in the chest.

In a very odd move, Marvin Sr. then walked downstairs, opened the front door, tossed the gun onto the lawn, sat on the porch, and waited for the police to arrive. There is a conflicting report making the rounds online that Marvin Sr.’s wife, Alberta Gay, was the one who actually threw the gun onto the lawn from an upstairs window. I am unsure which version of the story is true, but, either way, when the police did arrive, Marvin Sr. was waiting for them on the porch. He was arrested and later charged with murder. Marvin Jr. was taken to California Hospital Medical Center (located at 1401 South Grand Avenue), where he was pronounced dead at 1:01 p.m. – one day before his 45th birthday.

Due to the fact that he had suffered massive bruising from the altercation with his son, Marvin Sr. was allowed to plead no-contest to voluntary manslaughter and received only five years probation for the crime. Alberta moved out of the house during the trial and subsequently sued her husband for divorce. She passed away in 1987. That same year, Marvin Jr.’s sisters deeded the property to the Marvin P. Gaye Jr. Memorial Foundation, which wound up selling it to new owners in 1988. And while Wikipedia states that Marvin Sr. lived at the West Adams residence for a time briefly following his trial, I am not sure if that information is correct.

Marvin Gaye’s former home boasts 5 bedrooms, 2 baths, 5,352 square feet, and a 0.48-acre plot of land. The front door happened to be open while we were stalking the place, so we got a tiny peek at the interior.

The property also boasts a huge detached two-car garage with an upstairs guest house that Marvin Jr.’s brother Frankie and his wife, Irene, lived in at the time of the killing.

Fellow stalker Scott Michaels, from the FindADeath website, did a fabulous write-up on Marvin’s killing and also posted a photograph of the home taken shortly afterwards in which you can see that it still looks EXACTLY the same today as it did in 1984. Aside from a change in the trim’s paint color and a different style of fence, the residence is pretty much identical to its 1984 self. Absolutely amazing! You can check out another 1984 photograph of the house here. And while a January 1998 Los Angeles Magazine article stated that devoted fans still showed up to the residence annually on Marvin Jr.’s birthday to hold candlelight vigils for the fallen singer, I am unsure if those vigils still take place to this day.

You can check out a video that Scott Michaels took inside of the home by clicking below.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for telling me about this location. Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The home where Marvin Gaye was killed is located at 2101 South Gramercy Place in the West Adams District of Los Angeles.