Movie Star Homes – IAMNOTASTALKER

October 13, 2015September 29, 2017

Mary Miles Minter’s Former Mansions

The death of William Desmond Taylor remains one of Hollywood’s most notorious unsolved mysteries, over 90 years after its occurrence. On the evening of February 1st, 1922, the 50-year-old director was shot and killed in his Westlake apartment complex. Though there were suspects aplenty, no one was ever indicted in the murder and the case was officially closed without resolution (for the second time) on February 23rd, 1938, never to be re-opened. Common belief, though, has long since held that the guilty party was Charlotte Shelby, the mother of 19-year-old starlet Mary Miles Minter, with whom Desmond was said to be having an illicit May-December affair. I became fascinated with the case after reading Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood and stalked the site of Taylor’s former bungalow as part of my 2014 Haunted Hollywood postings. So this year I thought it only fitting to venture out to visit two mansions that once belonged to Mary and Charlotte, the addresses of which I found thanks to my buddy E.J. Fleming’s new book, Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites: Seventeen Driving Tours with Directions and the Full Story.

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The life of Mary Miles Minter was a strange one. The actress was born Juliet Reilly on April 25th, 1902 in Shreveport, Louisiana. Her mother, then known as Lilla Pearl Reilly, soon tired of what she deemed a lowly existence in the Bayou and moved Juliet and her sister, as well as her widowed mother, Julia Miles, to New York, hoping to catch a taste of the good life. Lilla changed her name to Mrs. Charlotte Shelby and quickly became the stage mom to end all stage moms, pushing her daughters into the limelight. Charlotte was the OG momager. Before there was a Dina Lohan, before there was a Kris Kardashian, there was a Charlotte Shelby. It wasn’t long before Juliet caught the eye of theatre producer Charles Frohman, who hired the nine-year-old to act in rather sexy stage productions. When Juliet’s age was questioned by child labor advocates, Shelby’s response was to acquire the birth certificate of a 16-year-old dead relative named Mary Minter and pass it along as her daughter’s. The scheme worked and from that point on the youngster was known as Mary Miles Minter. Shortly thereafter, Charlotte relocated the family to Los Angeles and Mary quickly secured a $1.3-million contract with film magnate Adolph Zukor, going on to act in 54 silent films.

After finding success, Charlotte, using Mary’s money, leased the family a mansion in Hancock Park that had once belonged to silent screen star Mary Pickford. Today, the estate, which still stands at 56 Fremont Place, is a popular filming location, appearing in everything from Taken (screen capture below) to CSI: Miami to Beverly Hills, 90210. During the time the family was living there, Mary landed a role in the 1919 movie Anne of Green Gables. William Desmond Taylor, who was then 47, was the director. For 17-year-old Minter, it was love at first sight. Though rumors of an affair between the two are still persistent to this day, Tinseltown author William J. Mann asserts that Taylor kept her at arms length. Either way, Mary was smitten and wanted nothing more than to marry Desmond, retire from the film industry and have his children. Charlotte would have none of it, though. Mary was her meal ticket and she did not want the gravy train to end.

In late 1920, when the lease on the Hancock Park mansion was up, the family headed to the East Coast for a brief vacation. Upon returning, Charlotte, using Mary’s money once again, purchased a 20,000-square-foot, 3-story, 40-room mansion that they named Casa de Margarita (or Casa de Marguerite, depending on which website you are reading). They lived at the property for a short time before beginning a renovation project in the fall of 1921, at which point they relocated to a house at 2039 Hobart Boulevard in Los Feliz, where they remained until the spring of 1922. It was while they were living on Hobart that Taylor was murdered in his bungalow. Mary’s career came to an almost screeching halt.

Charlotte was immediately painted as a prime suspect. Shelby had vocally opposed her daughter’s adoration of Taylor for years, had done everything she could to keep the two apart, and had even once threatened him publicly, saying “If I ever catch you hanging around Mary again, I will blow your goddamned brains out.” A grand jury was convened at one point, and while they chose not to indict her, the murder plagued both Charlotte and Mary for the rest of their lives.

At the time of William’s murder, Hollywood was in a precarious position thanks to the Fatty Arbuckle scandal, which had hit the industry hard financially. Studios did not want their stars to have connections to any sort of salacious behavior as it proved detrimental to the success of their movies. The Famous Players-Lasky Corporation decided that Mary had to go. When she was informed that her contract would not be renewed, she was just shy of her 21st birthday. The unemployed actress had just moved out of Casa de Margarita and into a Hollywood Hills bungalow. The move had caused an estrangement between the star and her mother and, unfortunately for Mary, it was Charlotte who held the purse strings. Without a studio contract, she no longer had a way to pay the bills.

By the summer of 1923, Mary was in dire straits. She was broke, had lost the love of her life, her career had disappeared, she had developed a heroin problem and gained a large amount of weight. To stir up publicity (which would hopefully lead to a job), she created a fake story claiming an attempt had been made on her life and that the killer’s intentions had been to forever silent her on what she knew about Taylor’s death. Neither the police nor the tabloids bought her story, though. The starlet then moved to New York for a time, hoping to carve out a career on the stage, but it never took shape. She eventually began legal proceedings against Charlotte in order to regain the money she made as a young star. For reasons that are not entirely clear, but that I am guessing have to do with the lawsuit, Shelby was forced to sell Casa Margarita at auction in December 1932.

Mother and daughter eventually reconciled. Ever the shrewd businesswoman, Charlotte had invested Mary’s money rather wisely and the two moved in together, first to an estate in Beverly Hills and then, in the 1950s, to a spacious, 6-bedroom, 9-bathroom (!!!), 5,501-square-foot home known as the Bishop Conaty House in Santa Monica. The pad, which sits on 0.46 acres, was originally constructed in 1907 for the Reverend Bishop Thomas Conaty of Los Angeles and San Diego. Charlotte and Mary would live there for the rest of their days.

Mary’s later years were not happy ones. The former starlet started turning into a recluse. Shortly after Charlotte passed away in 1957, Minter married a real estate developer named Brandon O’Hildebrandt. When he passed away in 1965, she grew even more reclusive. Last year I attended a Q&A about Tinseltown and photographer Michael Childers happened to be in attendance. He spoke of meeting Minter at her home in her final years and described her existence as a very “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? situation.“ Apparently, the then obese actress surrounded herself with photographs from her younger years and continued to wear the hairstyle and clothing from her movie star days. On one particularly bad night in 1981, a robber broke into Mary’s residence, tied her up and stole $300,000 worth of items. It was later discovered that her caretaker was behind the theft.

On August 4th, 1984, Mary Miles Minter passed away silently at the home, her film legacy largely forgotten, but her entwinement with one of Hollywood’s most infamous unsolved murders still very much intact.

Casa de Margarita served many incarnations after it was sold by Charlotte in 1932. For a time the property was utilized by a seminary, then it became a home for unwed mothers, and then a shelter for children. Today, it is a family service center named Children’s Institute, Inc. According to this article, the dwelling still boasts much of its original décor, including large fireplaces, a grand staircase, built-in bookcases, a central courtyard with a fountain, and hardwood flooring. It is also supposedly haunted. You can see some interior photos of it here.

A big THANK YOU to my friend E.J., of The Movieland Directory website, for providing these addresses. For those who are as into Haunted Hollywood locales as I am, I highly recommend his book Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites: Seventeen Driving Tours with Directions and the Full Story (the second edition was just released via McFarland). The tome is chock full of macabre spots (I swear, one year virtually all of my Haunted Hollywood locations came from the first edition), all of which are well-researched and well-documented. As I have mentioned many times before, E.J. is one of the very few fellow stalkers whose information I trust. He is a rare breed in this field in that his data is accurate, his locales unique (read: not regurgitated from all of the other websites out there), and his story-telling bar none!

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Casa de Margarita, aka Mary Miles Minter’s former mansion, is located at 701 South New Hampshire Avenue in Koreatown. The home where Mary spent her final years can be found at 144 Adelaide Drive in Santa Monica.

July 1, 2014June 30, 2014

Marilyn Monroe’s Former Burbank Apartment Building

Shortly before I headed to Los Angeles for my weeklong birthday celebration with out-of-town friends Kim, Lavonna, Katie and Kaylee (that’s Katie and Kaylee in the above pic), I came across a Curbed post that mapped 43 properties where my girl Marilyn Monroe once lived. The blurb practically had me foaming at the mouth, obvs. I immediately sent the link to Lavonna and she added several of the addresses to her To-Stalk list, one of which was an apartment building located directly across the street from Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank. Since the girls had already scheduled a WB VIP Tour for the trip, this particular locale was quite convenient and we included a stalk of it on that day’s itinerary.

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Prior to reading the Curbed post, I had no idea that Marilyn had ever called Burbank home. According to the article, she lived in an apartment building at 131 South Avon Street for a very brief period during the summer of 1947 in what seemed to be some sort of house-sitting arrangement.

Per Realtor.com (and several other websites), the 13,283-square-foot structure (which I believe is comprised of 13 units) was originally built in 1835 – 179 years ago. Yeah, that seems a bit ridiculous to me, too. My guess is that the 1835 date is a typo (that somehow got picked up by numerous sources) and that the building was actually constructed in 1935.

Realtor.com also notes that the property was renovated in 1995. As you can see below, it definitely seems to have received a facelift at some point because the façade looks rather modern, especially the front doors and windows.

Because the building does look so new, I had originally wondered if Marilyn’s former domicile had been torn down at some point and a different edifice built in its place. That does not appear to have been the case, though. Pictured below is a 1972 aerial view of the property, as well as a current one. As you can see, the structure of the building seems to be the same in both images. Which means that Marilyn’s former home is actually still standing! How incredibly cool is that?

A peek inside the front doors – courtesy of Lavonna. Someone needs to tell the person in 102 that it’s time for the Christmas bow to come down.

Marilyn’s former Burbank home is located two doors north of the “fake Fendi” building from Sex and the City, so we also did a little stalking of that locale. And while we didn’t have any Fendi on us at the time, we were packing some Louis Vuitton (none of it fake, mmmkay!), so we just had to pose for a picture with it.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Marilyn Monroe’s former apartment building is located at 131 South Avon Street in Burbank. The fake Fendi building from Sex and the City is located two doors south at 141 South Avon Street.

June 3, 2014June 3, 2014

Jason Priestley’s Former Apartment

I haven’t been getting much sleep the past few nights and it’s all Jason Priestley’s fault. His new book, Jason Priestley: A Memoir, has me burning the midnight oil. The chapters are brief (most only a page or two) and begging to be perused. I find myself repeatedly thinking ‘I’ll just read one more,’ and the next thing I know it’s midnight. Ah, well, the fatigue has been worth it. The tome is fabulous and enthralling. I cannot more highly recommend it – especially since JP includes the addresses of quite a few stalking locations, one of which is the apartment building where he lived shortly before landing his life-changing role on Beverly Hills, 90210. So Mike, from MovieShotsLA, and I ran right out to stalk the place last week while I was in L.A.

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In the fall of 1987, 18-year-old Jason and his good friend/fellow actor Bernie Coulson moved into a two-bedroom unit at the Klump Regency apartment building located at 5050 Klump Avenue in North Hollywood. JP describes the place as “your basic Valley craphole.” During the eight months that he lived on the premises, JP would vary between traveling back and forth to his native Vancouver for small film and television roles and auditioning in L.A. where he was trying to make it big in Hollywood. On one occasion after returning home from a Canadian shoot, Priestley walked into his bedroom to find a “tall skinny” guy asleep in his bed. That lanky man turned out to be none other than a young Brad Pitt! Brad, whom JP calls “the nicest Midwestern guy imaginable,” Bernie and Jason continued to live in the apartment for the next few months, with Pitt crashing on the couch.

In mid-1988, Brad rented a two-bedroom duplex on La Jolla Avenue in West Hollywood (where he lived for several years afterwards, according to Jason) and invited JP and Bernie to move in with him. Because the Writers Guild of America strike was making roles hard to come by at the time, Jason chose instead to temporarily relocate to Vancouver. It was not long before he returned to L.A., though, and landed the role that would turn him into a household name.

Thanks to Jason’s not-so-keen description of the place, I was expecting Klump Regency to be rather dingy, but it is actually pretty nice. You can check out some interior photographs of one of the building’s two-bedroom apartments here. According to Zillow, the 50-unit complex features a swimming pool, Jacuzzi, gym and laundry facilities. Not too shabby digs for a bunch of struggling actors!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Klump Regency, Jason Priestley’s former apartment building, is located at 5050 Klump Avenue in North Hollywood.

February 25, 2014February 24, 2014

The Wrong-Door Raid Apartments

One of the most infamous (and humorous) scandals to ever rock Tinseltown involved my girl Miss Marilyn Monroe and her second ex-husband, legendary baseball player Joe DiMaggio. (Their relationship wasn’t always sunshine and roses.) Known as the Wrong-Door Raid, it occurred in the late night hours of November 5th, 1954, but did not become public knowledge until almost a year later. I stalked the apartment building where the raid took place – at 8122 Waring Avenue in West Hollywood – last summer, initially planning to blog about it as a Haunted Hollywood locale. As I got to researching the events of that evening, though, I realized they were far more comical than scary and decided to postpone the post until now.

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After a scant 274 days of marriage, Joe and Marilyn divorced on October 27th, 1954. Convinced the starlet was finding solace in another man’s arms (namely her voice coach, Hal Schaefer), DiMaggio hired private detective Barney Ruditsky to tail her. On the night of November 5th, Ruditsky gave DiMaggio some news – Marilyn had just arrived at an apartment building on Waring Avenue in West Hollywood, quite possibly to meet up with a paramour. Joltin’ Joe was dining at the Villa Capri with close friend Frank Sinatra at the time and, hoping to catch Marilyn in the act, the two men rushed out of the restaurant and headed over to West Hollywood. (What they planned to do when they “caught” her is unclear.) On the sidewalk outside of the building, they met up with Ruditsky and a second private eye named Philip Irwin. Some other cohorts were also apparently on the scene, but reports vary as to who. Camera (as well as, supposedly, an ax) in hand, the men broke down the back door of one of the building’s ground floor units shortly after 11 p.m. and stormed inside. They did not find Marilyn, though. Instead, they surprised a spinster named Florence Kotz, who had been asleep in her bed. The group had somehow mistakenly entered the wrong apartment. Marilyn was in an upstairs unit with her friend Sheila Stewart (and quite possibly Schaefer as well, although that has not been proven) during the incident.

Florence immediately called the police, but the perpetrators had already run off, disappearing into the night. Not much was made of the events and the poor woman was left wondering why a group of strange men had broken down her door and taken a photograph of her in bed. Then in September 1955, Confidential magazine published an article telling the true story behind the raid. The sh*t quickly hit the proverbial fan. Frank was eventually served a subpoena on February 16th, 1957 at his Palm Springs home via two detectives who, in a karmic twist, knocked on his front door at 4 a.m., waking him up. Ironically, he filed a complaint. He later testified that he was a participant in the Wrong-Door Raid, but had never entered Florence’s apartment, choosing instead to stay behind in the car. His version of events was largely disputed, though. No one was ever prosecuted for the crime, but Florence did sue the group for $200,000, eventually settling for $7,500.

All I can think when reading about the events of the Wrong-Door Raid night is, ‘What a bunch of morons!’ Love makes people do crazy, ridiculous things, I guess. As Amanda Peet said in fave movie A Lot Like Love, “If you’re not willing to sound [or act, in this case] stupid, you don’t deserve to be in love.”

Years later, Schaefer came forward and “confessed” that he had been with Marilyn in Sheila’s apartment that night. I tend not to believe him, though. While he might well have been in Sheila’s home, I highly doubt it was because Monroe had any romantic interest in him. The guy seems like a total creeper – especially in the video below when describing the events that took place in the hospital with Marilyn following his suicide attempt.

There are several differing reports as to which unit DiMaggio and Sinatra actually broke into and which unit Marilyn was actually in during the raid, but according to the book Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites, written by fellow stalker E.J. of The Movieland Directory, Florence’s apartment was the one located at 754 North Kilkea Drive.

And Sheila’s apartment was the one at 8122 Waring Avenue.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Wrong-Door Raid apartments are located at 8120/8122 Waring Avenue/754 N. Kilkea Drive in West Hollywood.

December 6, 2013December 15, 2013

Marilyn Monroe’s Childhood Home

One location that had been on my To-Stalk list for what seemed like ages was the Hawthorne-area home where my girl Miss Marilyn Monroe spent the first eight-and-a-half years of her life. Fellow stalker Lavonna had texted me the address years ago, but because I so rarely find myself in that neck of the woods, I was never able to make it out there. Until a couple of weeks ago, that is, when I realized that the residence was not too far from a hotel near LAX where the Grim Cheaper and I happened to be staying. So I dragged him right on over to stalk it (and to a Four Christmases locale that I will be writing about in late December).

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Gladys Mortensen was single, living in Hollywood and working as a film cutter at Consolidated Film Industries when she became pregnant with Marilyn in 1925. In December of that year, shortly before she was to give birth, she headed to Hawthorne in the hopes that she could move in with her mother, Della, for a brief time before and after the delivery. Della had other plans, though – she was about to sail to Borneo to make amends with her estranged husband, Charles Grainger, who was working in the oil fields there. Arrangements were instead made for Gladys to stay across the street at the home of Wayne and Ida Bolender, a deeply religious couple who served as foster parents to several children.

The Bolenders had moved into the 3-bedroom, 1-bath, 1,376-square-foot clapboard residence pictured below in 1919. At the time, the home, which was built in 1913, boasted 4 four acres of land (it now sits on a 0.20-acre parcel), where the family raised chickens and goats and grew vegetables. The property’s original address was 459 East Rhode Island Street, but during the re-districting of the area in the ‘30s and ‘40s it was changed to 4201 West 134th Street. You can see a photograph of the house from the time that the Bolenders owned it here. It is absolutely REMARKABLE how little of it has changed over the past ninety-plus years! You can also check out a picture of a newborn Marilyn in front of the dwelling here, in which a “459” address placard is visible in the background. So incredibly cool!

Gladys gave birth on June 1st, 1926 in the charity ward of Los Angeles General Hospital. She named her new daughter Norma Jeane Mortensen. After twelve days, the two returned to the Bolender’s. Gladys spent about three weeks at the Hawthorne house with Marilyn before heading back to Hollywood and her job at Consolidated in July. She left her baby behind, paying Wayne and Ida $5 a week to care for her. Contrary to what has been reported, Gladys did not abandon Marilyn entirely, but came to visit her on a weekly basis, often spending the night.

When Gladys’ son from her first marriage, Jackie, from whom she was estranged, died at the age of 14 in August 1933, she became compelled to regain custody of Norma Jeane. She took on a second job and by October 1934, had saved enough money to purchase a six-thousand-dollar house (at 6812 Arbol Drive in Hollywood – sadly, it’s no longer standing). That same month, eight-year-old Marilyn left the Bolenders and moved in with her mother. She didn’t stay long, though. Gladys had a nervous breakdown in late December and was committed to an asylum, at which point Norma Jeane was sent to live with one of her mother’s good friends, Grace McKee. She didn’t stay there long, though, either. By 1935, Gladys could no longer afford to care for Marilyn and sent her to the Los Angeles Orphan’s Home (now Hollygrove Home for Children, which I blogged about here). The girl who would become the world’s most famous blonde spent the remaining years of her childhood being bounced around from foster parents to family members. Then, at the tender age of 16, she married her first husband, James Dougherty, and moved into a guest house in Sherman Oaks, which also, unfortunately, no longer stands. You can read my blog post on that location here.

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

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Lavonna for telling me about this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Marilyn Monroe’s childhood home is located at 4201 West 134th Street in Hawthorne.

July 2, 2013July 2, 2013

Kirk Douglas’ Former Palm Springs House

The Grim Cheaper and I are finally home from a blissful two weeks in Switzerland. It was so hard to leave my best friend and his amazing family (pictured above) and the beauty of their country – especially being that when we returned to Palm Springs, temperatures were around 122 degrees! I will be sharing some pictures from our trip (and I took plenty – by ten days in, I had filled up an 8GB memory card!), as well as a few Swiss stalking locales that I visited while there, in the near future. But for today, I thought I would once again blog about a Behind the Candelabra-related location that I stalked prior to leaving for the Land of the Alps.

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A few weeks ago, while doing some Behind the Candelabra research, I came across a The Guardian article in which Michael Douglas, who played the flamboyant pianist in the HBO biopic, talked about once meeting Liberace while visiting the desert home of his father, Kirk Douglas. Of the encounter, Michael said, “I met him once in passing. My father had a weekend house in Palm Springs and I remember driving out and we came to this cross-section and this Rolls-Royce convertible pulled up alongside. It was a sunny day and, my God, the reflections were bouncing off his gold jewelry and diamond rings and his hair was perfectly coiffed. Of course, we now know that he was wearing a wig.” Well, I, of course, immediately started itching to track down the house Michael was referring to in the article.

As it turns out, I had actually stalked the home (at least what I think is the correct home) – and blogged about it – once before, way back in March 2008. My research on this location is not exactly definitive. In a The Irish Times article, Michael said that his encounter with Liberace took place around 1956. As Murphy’s Law would have it, though, Kirk Douglas moved from his first Palm Springs residence to his second right around that same time. Michael also mentioned in a Daily Mail article that his father’s house and Liberace’s house were in the same vicinity. But as Murphy’s Law would further have it, both of Kirk’s former desert dwellings are situated about two miles from Liberace’s earliest Coachella Valley abode, which is located at 1516 South Manzanita Avenue. Because the book Explorer’s Guide Palm Springs & Desert Resorts states that the pianist did not move into that home until 1957, though, I am 99.9% certain that the house where Michael’s Liberace encounter took place is the one pictured below.

Kirk’s original (and extremely nondescript) Palm Springs house, which he lived in for two years – from 1955 to 1957 – is located at 1069 East Marshall Way in the legendary Movie Colony neighborhood.

That property, which was recently remodeled and just sold about two weeks ago for $639,900, boasts three bedrooms, two baths, 2,095 square feet of living space, a one-bedroom, one-bath casita, travertine flooring, a pool, a 0.26-acre plot of land, and mountain views. You can check out some interior photographs of the dwelling here.

Kirk’s second desert house, which he owned for over four decades, is located at 515 Via Lola in the Old Las Palmas area of Palm Springs. The five-bedroom, five-bath, 3,790-square-foot abode, which sits on a 0.75-acre plot of land, was designed in 1954 by architects Richard Harrison and Donald Wexler. The modern post-and-beam residence, which originally featured four bedrooms, low ceilings, an asphalt and gravel roof, flagstone walls, and glass adornments, was commissioned by Robert Howard, the one-time owner of the Colony Palms Hotel, which I blogged about back in May. Howard put the property on the market two years after it was completed and it was subsequently purchased by Kirk and his second wife, Anne Buydens, in 1957. Upon buying the residence, the couple added a new façade, interior atriums, a three-car motor court, and quite a bit of square footage. They also transformed the garage into guest quarters. Kirk later bought an adjacent parcel of land on which he installed a tennis court, a gymnasium and a spa.

According to the fabulous book Palm Springs Confidential, the couple entertained quite a bit during their tenure at the home. Just a few of the famous guests who visited over the years include Natalie Wood, Gregory Peck, Stanley Kubrick, Billy Wilder, Yul Brynner, Warren Beatty, Burt Lancaster, Robert Kennedy, Henry Kissinger, Lady Bird Johnson, and Lynda Bird Johnson. Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn even leased the house from Kirk and Anne for a summer getaway on two different occasions and Vincente Minnelli held the wedding reception for his marriage to Lee Anderson (his fourth wife) there.

Kirk and Anne sold the home in October 1999 – for a cool $1.3 million – in order to move to Montecito to be closer to Michael.

To me, the residence exemplifies the Rat Pack-style of architecture that Palm Springs has become so synonymous with. I absolutely LOVE the two palm trees that are the focal point of the front yard.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Kirk Douglas’ longtime former Palm Springs home is located at 515 Via Lola in the Old Las Palmas neighborhood of Palm Springs. His first desert home can be found just about a mile away at 1069 East Marshall Way in the Movie Colony.

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.

April 3, 2013April 2, 2013

Brandi Glanville’s Former House

After watching the latest season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, I can say that Brandi Glanville is, without a doubt, my favorite cast member. I absolutely ADORE her. (I also love Lisa Vanderpump and Yolanda Foster. As for the rest of the Housewives? Well, to borrow one of my grandma’s catch-phrases, they can go take a long walk off a short pier for all I care. ) So I was practically chomping at the bit to get my hands on a copy of her new autobiography, Drinking & Tweeting: and Other Brandi Blunders, which I finally did two weeks ago. I then promptly devoured the thing in two sittings. My favorite part of the book was the chapter dealing with the pitfalls of social media, in which Brandi says, “Just ask yourself how many times you have interrupted a wonderful night with friends and family to post on Facebook or Twitter that you’re having a wonderful night. How many times have you stopped midsentence to ask a waiter to take a photo and then spent the next five minutes f*cking with filters to post it on Instagram?” #sotrue Besides being a good read, Drinking & Tweeting also, of course, provided a few stalking locations, which I was over the moon about. And while the residence that Brandi referred to most often throughout the tome is, unfortunately, unstalkable due to the fact that it located inside of the gated Mountain View Estates community in Calabasas, I did manage to track down (via fellow stalker E.J. of The Movieland Directory website) and stalk the Encino residence where the reality star lived with her philandering husband, Eddie Cibrian, just prior to that.

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Eddie and Brandi purchased the 8,560-square-foot abode pictured below in May 2002, a year after their wedding, for $2,020,000. The dwelling, which was originally built in 1992 and was renovated at some point during the couple’s tenure there, boasts a 0.48-acre plot of land, six en-suite bedrooms, including two master suites (one with two walk-in closets and dual showers), eight bathrooms, a chef’s kitchen, a banquet-sized formal dining room, a professional theatre with bi-level seating for 15 people, a rooftop sundeck, four fireplaces, a pool, a library, travertine and hardwood flooring throughout, a porte-cochere, and a three-car garage.

The then happy couple put the property, which was dubbed “Rancho Estate”, on the market in 2007 for a whopping $4,395,000. You can check out the real estate listing from that time here.

Your Mama, from the Real Estalker website, ripped the home apart in a November 2007 post, saying, “Oh dear. Somebody please get Your Mama a silver spike that we can drive through the heart of the decorating demon who is responsible for this Encino mess that luscious looking actor Eddie Cibrian and his model wifey Brandi (with an “i,” of course) call home. Dear Jeezis in heaven, Your Mama just prefers not to know that there are people in the world who actually want to live in houses with porte-cocheres meant to make the house look elegant and grandiose but really just make it look like a damn Ramada Inn.” And while Your Mama is absolutely right about the porte-cochere, I have to say that I rather like the interior of the residence, especially the open entryway, the curving staircase, and the wood-beamed ceilings.

Brandi and Eddie wound up selling the home to comedian Carlos Mencia in January 2008 for $4.3 million – well over two times what they had paid for it just five and a half years prior.

That same month they purchased their Mountain View Estates residence for $2.5 million. That home, which was originally built in 1994, features six bedrooms, seven baths (including his-and-her baths in the master bedroom), 6,610 square feet of living space, a 0.83-acre plot of land, custom-built closets (yes, please!), covered patios, and a pool with a slide and multiple waterfalls. Two years later, in early 2010, Brandi and Eddie put the home on the market for $2,349,000 as part of their divorce proceedings and eventually sold it in June for $2.2 million. The photographs below are from the real estate listing during that time.

And yes, that is a stripper pole in the master bedroom (classy!), of which the Real Estalker’s Your Mama said in a February 2010 post, “Listen babies, we’re all for folks getting down, dirty and fuh-reeky in the bedroom, but let Your Mama offer all you married ladeez a word to the wise: Iffin your man wants to install a stripper pole in your marital bedroom, you can be pretty damn sure he’s going to want to see scantily clad beehawtchas who are not you working that thing. Don’t believe Your Mama? Install a damn stripper pole and let us know what happens.” True dat! Notice that the pole was removed (either digitally or physically) for some of the real estate photos.

It was as Brandi was driving up to the “ostentatious neighborhood gates” of the Mountain View Estates community that she learned, via a text message from a friend, of her husband’s affair with LeAnn Rimes. So while I knew that I could not stalk her actual former home there, I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to Calabasas to do a little drive-by of those gates. I was so hoping to see an “open house” sign displayed out front, but, alas, that was not to be.

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 buddy E.J., from The Movieland Directory, for finding these locations.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Brandi Glanville’s former home is located at 4743 White Oak Avenue in Encino. Her other former house is located at 5497 Amber Circle, inside of the gated Mountain View Estates community, in Calabasas.