Movie Star Homes – Page 2

March 19, 2013March 19, 2013

Loretta Young’s Palm Springs House

While doing research on the Playa del Rey house where Judy Lewis (secret love child of Loretta Young and Clark Gable) was born (which I blogged about here), I came across a November 2011 The New York Times article about Lewis’ recent death which stated that the actress/psychotherapist was finally told the true story of her birth in 1966 while at her mother’s home in Palm Springs. Well, I, of course, immediately set about doing some cyber-stalking in order to track down the address of the Desert property and found it fairly quickly (thanks to The Movieland Directory website), and then dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk it just a few days later. In the meantime, I picked up Judy’s autobiography, Uncommon Knowledge, at my local library and started reading. (It is fabulous, by the way!) I had not yet gotten to the chapter that covered Loretta’s strained confession when I stalked her Palm Springs abode but, come to find out, not only was it NOT where the incident took place, but the actress did not even own the residence at the time! Think it’s too late for The Times to print a retraction?

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In The New York Times article, it is stated, “Ms. Lewis, a former actress who died on Friday at the age of 76, was 31 before she discerned the scope of the falsehoods that cast her, a daughter of Hollywood royalty, into what she later described as a Cinderella-like childhood. Confronted by Ms. Lewis, Young finally made a tearful confession in 1966 at her sprawling home in Palm Springs, Calif.” As it turns out, though, that confrontation actually took place at Loretta’s longtime house in West Hollywood, which I stalked this past weekend and will be blogging about soon. Being that Judy wrote a book that described Loretta’s confession in great detail, I am unsure of how such misinformation ever got printed. Especially considering the fact that Judy also stated in her book, which was published in 1994, that the last time she was ever in her mom’s home was on Mother’s Day 1986, seven long years before Loretta purchased a residence in Palm Springs.

It was not until 1993 that Loretta and her third husband, Jean Lewis (the famed Oscar-winning costume designer who created the dress my girl Marilyn Monroe wore when she famously sang “Happy Birthday” to President John Kennedy in 1962) purchased the Deepwell Estates home. At the time, the three-bedroom, three-and-a-half bath property, which was originally built in 1964, boasted fourteen-foot ceilings, indirect lighting, a pool, a suspended fireplace, and a circular living room that was decorated all in white. According to a September 2010 Palm Springs Life article, Loretta tended to the home’s exterior hedges herself, using a pair of scissors, and also decorated the site with a myriad of angels each Christmas. What I wouldn’t give to have been able to see that!

Sadly, Jean Louis passed away on April 20th, 1997 while sitting on the residence’s back patio. Loretta continued to live on the premises until her death at the age of 87 on August 12, 2000. The house was then sold by her estate in 2001 for $630,000, which, according to the fabulous book Palm Springs Confidential, was almost twice what she and Jean had paid for it in 1993.

While doing research for today’s post, I learned that one significant event between Loretta and Judy did actually take place at the Palm Springs property. In 2001, Judy appeared on Larry King Live and stated that Loretta had invited her to the Desert home shortly after Jean’s death in the hopes of mending their relationship, which they eventually did.

The couple who now own the property were nice enough to open it up to the public in 2011 for a party to raise the money needed to posthumously honor Loretta with a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars. The star was dedicated on May 19th, 2011 and is located at 121 South Palm Canyon Drive.

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 E.J., from The Movieland Directory, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Loretta Young’s Palm Springs house is located at 1075 Manzanita Avenue in the Deepwell Estates area of Palm Springs.

March 7, 2013March 6, 2013

Clark Gable’s Former House

Speaking of Clark Gable . . . another location that I stalked recently was the Encino-area ranch where the “King of Hollywood” lived for over two decades. I first read about this locale, as I did yesterday’s (the Playa del Rey house where Judy Lewis, Gable and Loretta Young’s secret love child, was born), in fellow stalker E.J.’s book Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites. So, while doing some solo San Fernando Valley stalking a few days before my and the Grim Cheaper’s big move to the desert, I figured I might as well stop by the residence to check it out.

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Clark Gable’s ranch was originally built in 1933 for director and founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Raoul Walsh. Gable and his then girlfriend, soon-to-be wife, Carole Lombard visited Walsh at his 20-acre property, which featured a nine-bedroom main house, a detached garage, citrus groves, alfalfa fields, a barn, a pigsty, a henhouse, and horse stables, and absolutely fell in love with it. When they heard that he was planning on selling the site, they jumped at the chance to purchase it, which they did in 1939, shortly after their nuptials, for a cool $50,000. According to E.J., at the time, the home’s entrance was located on Petit Drive (as you can see in this 1940 census, the original address was 4525 Petit Drive; it is now 4543 Tara Drive) and the property was surrounded by acres upon acres of orchards and fields. Tabloids quickly labeled the two-story clapboard residence “The House of Two Gables”.

Lombard tragically passed away in a plane crash just two years later, on January 16th, 1942, and it is said that Gable never recovered from his grief. Shortly after her death, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps and was sent to Europe to fight in World War II. Upon his return to America in 1944, he thought about selling the ranch, but ultimately decided to keep it and wound up living there with his fourth and fifth wives, Lady Sylvia Ashley and Kay Williams Spreckles, respectively.

Sadly, on November 5th, 1960, while changing a tractor tire in the ranch’s driveway, Gable suffered a heart attack. The following morning, he was taken to Hollywood Presbyterian hospital, where he passed away ten days later, on November 16th, 1960. Despite being married to Kay at the time, the actor was interred next to Carole Lombard at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. Spreckles and John Clark Gable (Kay and Clark’s son and Clark’s only legitimate child, who was born four months after the actor’s death) continued to live at the ranch until 1973, at which point it was sold to developers. Financier Michael Milken later bought the place in October 1977 for $587,500 and it appears that he still owns it to this day. According to Zillow, the dwelling currently boasts seven bedrooms, nine baths, 7,093 square feet of living space, and a 1.17-acre lot.

As you can see below, the home’s wooden exterior archway . . .

. . . and crookedly-placed white picket fence still look exactly the same today as they did when Gable lived there. Sadly though, little else of the place is visible from the street. And while the house still stands in much the same form as it did during Gable’s time, the twenty acres that once surrounded it were subdivided during the 1980s and transformed into a housing tract named the Clark Gable Estates. The streets in the neighborhood, Tara Drive and Ashley Oaks, were named in honor of Gable’s most famous movie, Gone with the Wind, which I think is so incredibly cool. I wonder if someday a community will be named after my man Matt Lanter. One of the streets could even be dubbed “Liam Court”!

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 E.J., from The Movieland Directory website, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Clark Gable’s former house is located at 4543 Tara Drive in Encino.

March 6, 2013March 6, 2013

The House Where Judy Lewis, Loretta Young and Clark Gable’s Daughter, Was Born

Today’s locale is easily one of the coolest I have visited in my 13-plus years of living in Southern California, which is ironic being that it is comprised of mostly vacant land. I am talking about the one-time location of the house where Judy Lewis, the secret love child of screen siren Loretta Young and movie legend Clark Gable, was born. I learned about the spot in fellow stalker E.J.’s book Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites and, although I knew next to nothing about Loretta Young at the time, was immediately intrigued. So I added the address to my To-Stalk list and began doing some preliminary cyber-stalking to see what the residence looked like now. When I went to Google Street View, though, it only showed miles upon miles of what looked like vacant swampland. I emailed to E.J. to ask if he knew what had happened to the area and he replied with a link to this CurbedLA article about the so-called Ghost Streets of Playa del Rey. Well, believe you me, although I was sad that Judy Lewis’ birth house was no longer, hearing that Los Angeles had its own ghost town had me salivating and I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there just a few days later.

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As the story goes, Loretta Young and Clark Gable met on the set of the 1935 film Call of the Wild. She was 22 and single, he was 35 and married to his second wife, Ria Langham. The two quickly began an affair that had Hollywood tongues wagging and it was not long before Loretta was pregnant. In order to hide the pregnancy, which she thought would destroy both her and Clark’s careers, the young star took off to Europe for an extended vacation with her mother, Gladys Royal. The rumors did not stop, though, and reporters followed Loretta and Gladys’ every move. Mother and daughter wound up secretly returning to L.A. and Loretta immediately went into hiding at a rental property that she and Gladys owned at 8612 Rindge Avenue in Playa del Rey. At 8:15 a.m. on November 6, 1935, Judy Lewis was born. Loretta returned to her mansion in Bel Air shortly thereafter and Judy was left at the Rindge Avenue house in the care of a nurse. She remained there until July 1936, at which time she was sent to St. Elizabeth’s Infant Hospital in San Francisco. Loretta “adopted” Judy about five months later. Rumors, of course, circulated around the adoption and as Judy grew up and came to resemble her famous father more and more, those rumors only caught fire. As you can see below, there is absolutely NO denying that Judy Lewis was Clark Gable’s daughter. It was not until Judy confronted Loretta at the age of 31 (at Loretta’s home in Palm Springs, which I am now going to have to stalk!), though, that the star admitted she was Judy’s biological mother and that Gable was her biological father. Such an incredibly sad story.

And while Judy states in her book that she was born at “8612 Rindge Street” in Venice, I have been able to surmise (with about 99.9% certainty) that, because there is no Rindge Street in Venice, Judy’s former house was actually located at 8612 Rindge Avenue in Playa del Rey, a neighborhood about two miles south of Venice. I believe that Judy’s former residence is the one denoted with a pink arrow in the historic aerial view, circa 1952, below.

Judy’s former house was located in Surfridge, an affluent seaside community that was founded in the 1920s by Minneapolis-born real estate developer Fritz Burns. The neighborhood, which was situated overlooking the Pacific Ocean, immediately attracted celebrities including Cecil B. DeMille and Carmen Miranda, who had custom homes built there. In 1928, a tiny airfield that was mostly used to host air shows was constructed on a plot of land neighboring and just east of Surfridge. That airfield eventually became Los Angeles International Airport, what is now the sixth busiest airport in the world. You can see LAX in the background of the photographs below. It is almost shocking how close it is to the former Surfridge neighborhood.

As LAX began to expand in the 1960s, Los Angeles World Airports started to purchase - and subsequently tear down – houses in the Surfridge community.

More than eight hundred residences wound up being razed, but, for whatever reason, roads, sidewalks, retaining walls, and street lights were left intact creating a spooky, almost surreal neighborhood of cracked streets that wind through empty lots. Today, the area encompasses between 302 and 470 (depending on which newspaper article you are reading) fenced-in, vacant acres.

And while Los Angeles World Airports considered developing the site by building an 18-hole golf course, a sand dune preserve and a viewing station to watch planes take off and land, those plans wound up being thwarted for a variety of reasons. All that exists on the property now is a 200-acre butterfly preserve where the once-endangered El Segundo blue butterfly now flourishes. According to a recent Los Angeles Times article, a portion of the site is set to be restored in the near future, though, whereupon several ghost roads and ancient foundations will be removed and native plants brought in to return the area to its pre-developed state.

In the meantime, it’s a great place to watch planes take off and land, not to mention an intriguing stalking location.

You can check out some great photographs of the Surfridge neighborhood before it was razed here and here.

The abandoned Surfridge community is even a filming location. The site was featured in the music video for the Azure Ray song “New Resolution”.

You can watch that video by clicking below.

Thanks to fellow stalker Jeff, I learned that the Surfridge neighborhood was also featured in the climax of the 2011 thriller In Time, although a little CGI trickery was employed to change the background of the scene. You can read about the exact areas of Surfridge that appeared in the movie on the Seeing Stars website here.

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 E.J., from The Movieland Directory website, for telling me about this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The house where Judy Lewis, Loretta Young and Clark Gable’s daughter, was born was formerly located at 8612 Rindge Avenue in Playa del Rey.

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.

February 14, 2013February 15, 2013

Tom Rose’s House from “Beverly Hills, 90210”

This past weekend, the Grim Cheaper surprised me with tickets for the Children’s Discovery Museum of the Desert annual Discovery Home Tour as a sort-of Welcome-to-Palm-Springs gift. The tour was an experience, to say the least. I honestly cannot remember the last time the GC and I laughed so hard – and for so long. I was “live texting” fellow stalker Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, throughout the day and at one point, after describing a house that had a microwave, mini-fridge, espresso machine, and pantry set up in multiple bathrooms directly across from toilets
(I’m not making this up – residents of that particular abode could literally be sitting on the toilet and making espresso at the same time!), he asked, “What f*cking desert have you moved to? The Sahara?” I have tears in my eyes right now going back through all of the texts from that day. Ah, good times! Anyway, while driving through the Las Palmas neighborhood mid-tour, I mentioned to the GC that I had yet to stalk the Palm Springs residence that Dylan McKay (Luke Perry) visited in the Season 5 episode of fave show Beverly Hills, 90210 titled “P.S. I Love You.” I remembered that fellow stalker Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, had the address posted on his site, so I pulled over to look it up. As fate would have it, I actually pulled over directly across the street from the home! I mean, what are the odds of that? So I jumped out of the car and quickly snapped a few pics.

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In real life, the residence, which was originally built in 1983 and sits perched above Patencio Road, boasts seven bedrooms, seven baths, 6,989 square feet of living space, and a 0.73-acre plot of land. The ginormous property was last sold in December 1986 for $3,428,000.

According to a September 2010 Palm Springs Life article, the dwelling belongs to none other than Barbra Streisand and James Brolin, although I was unable to verify that claim through property records or other sources.

The article also states that the residence boasts a “guest mansion”, which, from looking at aerial views, can only be the structure denoted below. It was also built in 1983 and features five bedrooms, six baths, 6,948 square feet, and a 0.9-acre plot of land. Some guest mansion! That place is bigger than most houses!

In the “P.S. I Love You” episode of Beverly Hills, 90210, Dylan and Charley Rawlins (Jeffrey King) head to Palm Springs to meet with a possible investor for their movie. That investor, Tom Rose (James Handy), turns out to be a mobster and, as you can see below, things don’t go quite according to plan. Gotta love the later years of 90210!

Before Dylan winds up hanging off of the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, though, he meets with Tom Rose at the mobster’s desert mansion. As you can see below, the home’s front gate looks exactly the same in person as it did onscreen. (A HUGE thank you to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for making screen captures of Tom’s house for me. I do not own Season 5 of 90210 on DVD, but presumed that the episode would be available for download on iTunes or elsewhere online. Sadly, that was not the case. I could not find “P.S. I Love You” ANYWHERE! Because the vast majority of the episode took place in the Coachella Valley, I was really looking forward to watching it, too. Boo!)

The property’s intercom now looks completely different, though, and was either swapped out for the filming or has since been replaced.

In an odd twist, the house that appeared in the episode looks nothing at all like the actual house that stands behind that front gate. As you can see below, Tom Rose’s residence was Moroccan in style and featured a tall, domed tower . . .

. . . while the real life residence is modern in style and lacks any sort of a tower.

The home’s real life driveway does not match what appeared in the episode, either. While Tom Rose’s driveway opened up to the front of his residence, the actual driveway opens up to the side of the house. Tom’s driveway was also flanked by short stone walls . . .

. . . which are missing in real life. If I had to guess, I would say that, while it is possible that the residence has been vastly remodeled since the filming of 90210 in 1995, I think it is much more likely that a different house (most likely one in the Los Angeles area) was used for the scenes that took place behind the front gate. Don’t quote me on that, though – it is just a guess. If Barbra Streisand really does own the home, as Palm Springs Life states (and because it was last sold in 1986, that means she would have owned it at the time of the filming, as well) this scenario would make sense, as Babs does not strike me as the sort of person who would EVER allow a film crew inside of her residence.

The interior of the property that appeared in the episode is pictured below. And while I am certain that a real life interior was used in the filming and not a set, I am guessing that said interior is located elsewhere, most likely in Los Angeles.

Check out the boom microphone visible in the top of the screen capture below, which Mike pointed out to me.

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 Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, for finding this location and to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for making the screen captures that appear in this post.

Until next time, Happy Stalking – and a very happy Valentine’s Day to all of my fellow stalkers!

Stalk It: Tom Rose’s house from the “P.S. I Love You” episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 is located at 555 North Patencio Road in Palm Springs.

January 29, 2013January 29, 2013

Lester Siegel’s House from “Argo”

Today’s post is the very first blog written from my new home in the desert. The Grim Cheaper and I moved last Wednesday (it took over 15 hours!) and are finally getting settled in to our Palm Springs pad. There is still quite a bit left to complete, though, and, while the hyper-organized/anal/OCD-side of me has a hard time doing anything while there are still boxes to be unpacked and rooms to be organized, I decided to do a little blogging today, regardless. My posts over the next couple of weeks will most likely be intermittent, though, while we continue to settle in. And now, on with the post! Another filming location from fave movie Argo that I found thanks to the fabulous Los Angeles Times article forwarded to me by Mike, from MovieShotsLA, was the home where Hollywood producer Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin) lived. And I just have to say here how desperate I am to stalk LA/Ontario International Airport, which masqueraded as the Tehran airport in Argo. I have a flight scheduled out of there in early March and, let me tell you, I canNOT wait! But I digress. Anyway, I dragged the GC right on out to stalk Lester Siegel’s mansion a few weekends ago, shortly before our big move.

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In real life, Lester’s mansion actually belongs to actress Zsa Zsa Gabor and her longtime husband, Frederic Prinz von Anhalt, who seems to be a rather accident-prone individual – in October 2010, Frederic swallowed a bee that then stung him in the throat; in December 2010, after mistaking nail glue for eye drops, he accidentally glued his own eye shut; and in September 2011, he was hit by a car while walking in Beverly Hills. Yikes! Although there are quite a few conflicting reports about the property’s history online (many of which seem to have been propagated by Gabor and Frederic themselves), the fact of the matter is that the residence was originally built in 1955 for John and Gladys Zurlo. And while famous recluse Howard Hughes did rent the dwelling for a time in the 1960s (and apparently wore a hole in the carpet thanks to his notorious pacing), he never owned the place nor was it built for him. Gabor has also reportedly stated that she bought the pad directly from Hughes, but according to the Zurlos’ granddaughter, Barbara Yobs, the couple themselves sold the home to Gabor in 1973 for $250,000. For the record, it is further untrue that Elvis Presley ever lived on the premises, as Gabor has also claimed. Anyway, due to failing health and mounting medical bills, Gabor and Frederic put the property on the market in June 2011 for $15 million. It has yet to sell, though, so in the meantime the couple has been leasing the place out to film crews. HBO’s yet-to-be released Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra also made use of the estate last year.

Sadly, as you can see below, aside from the front gate, very little of the dwelling is visible from the street. Back in June 2011, fave website CurbedLA posted quite a few real estate photographs, though, which you can check out here. As stated in a Huffington Post article, the home “was built in the ‘50s and doesn’t look as if it has been redecorated since. It is lavish and sings old over-the-top Hollywood glamour.” Yep, that pretty much sums it up. The Hollywood Regency-style dwelling boasts seven bedrooms, seven baths, 8,878 square feet of living space (or 6,393 depending on which real estate listing you check), one acre of land, 270-degree views of downtown Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean, a grand salon, staff quarters, a bar, a rooftop terrace, indoor and outdoor entertaining areas, and a pool. Supposedly, Zsa Zsa swam naked in said pool every morning (yuck!) and also entertained such luminaries as Queen Elizabeth, Bob Hope, Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Elizabeth Taylor, Kirk Douglas, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Frank Sinatra, and Henry Kissinger on the premises.

Quite a few areas of the house were used in Argo, including the front exterior;

the circular entry-way (LOVE those red walls!);

the formal living room;

the bar;

and the backyard and pool.

A great aerial view of the house was also shown in the flick. Man, what I wouldn’t give to see the inside of that place!

On an Argo side-note – for those interested in how much of the movie was actually true (and the vast majority of it was – even the part about the Iranian government hiring professional carpet-weavers to piece together documents and photographs that had been shredded by American diplomats just prior to the embassy being taken hostage!), you can check out a fabulous Slate.com article here.

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: Zsa Zsa Gabor’s house, aka Lester Siegel’s mansion from Argo, is located at 1001 Bel Air Road in Bel Air.

October 31, 2012September 29, 2017

Johnny Weissmuller’s Former Home

I would like to start off today’s post by wishing all of my fellow stalkers a very Happy Halloween! And while I could not be more excited to celebrate the day that I pretty much spend all year waiting for, my heart is broken over the devastation to the East Coast (especially New York, one of my favorite cities in the entire world) caused by Hurricane Sandy. My prayers go out to those affected by the storm. Here’s wishing for a speedy and safe recovery process and that those on the East Coast are still able to somewhat enjoy Halloween. And now, on with the post! Knowing how much I love me some historical properties, fellow stalker E.J., from The Movieland Directory website, recently told me about a massive Bel Air estate that had once belonged to Tarzan-actor/five-time Olympic-gold-medalist Johnny Weissmuller. E.J. thought that I might be interested in stalking the place for my Haunted Hollywood posts being that it has been abandoned for almost two and a half decades now. An abandoned mansion with a Hollywood history? Um, sold! So I immediately added the site to my To-Stalk list and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there this past weekend.

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According to Wikipedia, the property, which was named a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument on April 6, 1990, is known as the Nicolosi Estate and it was designed in 1931 by Paul Revere Williams, the legendary architect who also designed Perino’s restaurant (which I blogged about here) and the residence that stood in for Wayne Manor on the Batman television series (which I blogged about here). The mansion was named in honor of one of its lesser-known residents, sculptor Joseph Nicolosi, who lived on the premises beginning in the 1950s until his death in 1961. According to property records, the Mediterranean Revival-style pad still belongs to the Nicolosi family, although it has not been lived in for over 24 years. As you can see below, sadly, not much of the place can currently be seen from the street.

Thankfully though, E.J. was kind enough to share some photographs that he took of the home back in 1988, when the property was much more visible to the public. As you can see, thanks to some fire damage, the place looks like a real life haunted house.

The Nicolosi Estate was commissioned by Johnny Weissmuller, who portrayed the legendary character Tarzan in twelve of the series’ films. The actor was also a lifelong competitive swimmer and the house reflects his passion. While the 8,700-square-foot, 4-bedroom, 5-bath abode looks to have been pretty spectacular during its heyday, it is the GINORMOUS 300-foot-long serpentine swimming pool (which is visible from the road) that circles around the dwelling, complete with rock bridges and grotto-style hot tubs, that had me drooling. What I would not give to have seen that pool in its glory days!

The pool also featured a cascading 150-foot electric waterfall made out of rocks, which you can see a portion of in the photograph below.

There seems to be quite a bit of confusion, as well as a slew of rumors, surrounding the history of the Nicolosi Estate. In fact, some people doubt that the house ever even belonged to Weissmuller. In The Ultimate Hollywood Tour Book, author William A. Gordon states, “Weissmuller’s only biographer was unable to substantiate this claim, and Jeff Hyland, a prominent Beverly Hills realtor and author of The Estates of Beverly Hills, told me he believes tour guides concocted the story because ‘it sounded good.’” According to the official Paul Revere Williams website, though, the house was indeed built for the Tarzan actor. And judging by that spectacular pool, I would say that the place definitely had to have been commissioned by a professional swimmer.

The rumors don’t stop there, though. In the book Miss O’Dell: My Hard Days and Long Nights with The Beatles, The Stones, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and the Women They Loved, author/groupie Chris O’Dell says of the house, “The grounds were equally extravagant, with a swimming pool the size of a football field, another pool made to look like a river and big enough for a rowboat, tennis courts, four pink stucco guest houses, and stately old trees with overarching branches and dense foliage. Newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst had bought the house for his mistress, actress Marion Davies; Howard Hughes had been a guest there in the grand old days of Hollywood, and John and Jackie Kennedy had honeymooned there in 1953. At least that’s what I was told, and I believed it.” And while the William Randolph Hearst/Marion Davies story is, most likely, true, I do not believe that JFK and Jackie ever spent any time on the premises.

Not that the place didn’t have its fair share of celebrity inhabitants. In 1972, actress Mackenzie Phillips lived there for a short time with her father, The Mamas & the Papas’ John Phillips, and step-mom, actress Genevieve Waite. In her 2009 book High on Arrival, Mackenzie says, “Dad gave me my own wing of the mansion. It was that kind of place – a pink Italian palace that was designed by Paul Williams for Johnny Weissmuller, the Olympic swimmer and on-screen Tarzan. We also heard it had been rented or owned by William Randolph Hearst for his long-term paramour, Marion Davis. Whatever the case, the house was clearly built as a place for rich people to play. First Mick and Bianca Jagger had rented it at my dad’s recommendation, and when they left, Dad and Genevieve moved in from the Chateau Marmont. Dad liked to live large, to show everyone what a big star he was. The ceilings were twenty feet tall. The moldings had hand-painted fleur-de-lis. There was a mirrored hall and countless antiques. The vast ballroom was surrounded by Moroccan murals of guys on horses and temples with pointed tops. There was a stage, mirrors, a ballet bar, and a supply of wax to restore the floor to an optimal surface for dancing.”

Of the pool, Mackenzie states, “Outside, there was a swimming pool that Johnny Weissmuller must have had built so he could do his laps. To say the pool was long is an understatement. It was 301 feet long, but skinny, and winding like a snake through exotic landscaping and funhouse weirdness. An arched bridge crossed over the pool and led to a stone tunnel with Gothic windows. Near the tunnel was a wall of hand-painted stucco cabanas. All the structures, including the bottom of the bridge over the pool (the part you saw when you swam under it) were decorated with hand-painted murals. It looked like the hybrid child of an Italian church and a Hawaiian lagoon. At the end of the pool closest to the road was a massive waterfall. What made the enormous, serpentine swimming pool most extraordinary was that it was kept empty. Who could maintain a pool that size? Dry and collecting dead leaves, it wound a deep, smooth path through the gardens with the mysterious aura of ancient ruins – the indestructible relic of other people’s lives. It may have been empty and eerie, but we put the pool to good use. It would have made an excellent skateboard park, but we didn’t have skateboards, so we rode Big Wheels down the length of it at four in the morning, racing back and forth in the deep darkness of the long, sunken pit.” So incredibly odd!

The Phillips family was evicted from the Nicolosi Estate after only a few short months due to non-payment of rent. Apparently, when Mackenzie was on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2009, a video clip of the house was shown, but I, unfortunately, could not find a copy of the episode anywhere with which to make screen captures for this post.

Sadly, the massive abode was completely gutted by a fire sometime in the late ‘80s and, for whatever reason, has been left to rot, abandoned, ever since. You can see some of the fire damage in E.J.’s photographs below. According to Yahoo Answers poster Cortney K., another rumor about the house states that the then owner of the property set fire to it, while his family was inside, one Christmas Eve night before fleeing the scene. Who knows if that story is true or not, but Cortney said she did once spot old Christmas lights and bows on the premises. Oh, if only those walls could talk! Whatever the truth behind the mystery of the abode may be, there is no discounting the fact that it is a fabulous place to stalk and I was absolutely in awe while there.

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 E.J., from The Movieland Directory website, for telling me about this location and for providing the fabulous pictures for this post!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Johnny Weissmuller’s former house is located at 414 St. Pierre Road in Bel Air. Alfred Hitchcock’s first Los Angeles home (which I blogged about here) is located just around the corner at 609 St. Cloud Road.

October 19, 2012September 29, 2017

The House Where Nick Adams Died

As I have mentioned a few times over the past couple of months, fellow stalker E.J., from The Movieland Directory website, recently published an e-book about Old Hollywood titled Unscripted: Hollywood Back-Stories, Volume 1 (which you can purchase on Nook here and on Kindle here). The book, which I devoured in less than a day, features countless historical locations, one of which – the Beverly Hills house where Rebel-Without-a-Cause actor Nick Adams was found dead in 1968 under “mysterious and still-unexplained” circumstances – I thought would be perfect for my Haunted Hollywood postings. So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there just a few days later.

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While I have never actually seen Rebel Without a Cause (I know, I know – and I call myself a stalker!), Unscripted features an entire chapter dedicated to the flick and the premature death of four of its young stars. [James Dean passed away in a car crash on September 30th, 1955 at the age of 24. Sal Mineo was stabbed to death in 1976 at age 37 in what appeared to be a robbery gone wrong. Natalie Wood famously drowned off the island of Catalina at the age of 41 in 1981. (You can read my blog posts on the hotel where she stayed the night before her death here and the restaurant where she ate one of her last meals here.) And Nick Adams was found dead of an apparent drug overdose on February 7th, 1968. He was 36.] When I read the sentence, “In a bizarre coincidence, each would die tragically, at a rate of one per decade, before and after the film’s October 27, 1955 release”, I was immediately intrigued and decided that I just had to stalk Adams’ then home.

At the time of his death, Adams, who was going through a divorce, had just returned from Rome after his latest movie, Murder in the Third Dimension, had been scrapped shortly before production was set to begin. Upon arriving in Los Angeles, Nick rented a two-story, three-bedroom, two-bath, 1,810-square-foot Cape Cod-style residence in the Trousdale Estates area of Beverly Hills. As the story goes, he was supposed to have dinner with his divorce lawyer, former L.A.P.D. officer Ervin “Tip” Roeder, on the night of February 7th, 1968. When Nick failed to show up at the restaurant, Roeder headed over to the 1957-era house to check on him. And while Roeder did not notice anything amiss, when no one answered his many knocks at the door, he headed to the back of the property, forced open a window and ventured upstairs, where he found Nick, fully clothed, sitting on the floor next to his bed, his eyes staring blankly ahead. The actor was dead at 36. You can see a photograph of Adams being removed from his home on the Find a Death website here.

The coroner, Dr. Thomas Noguchi, who also performed the autopsies of Marilyn Monroe, Robert F. Kennedy, Sharon Tate, and (coincidentally) Natalie Wood, found a lethal combination of paraldehyde (an anticonvulsant) and Promazine (an antipsychotic) in Adams’ system, which he believed would have killed the actor instantly. His death was ruled an accidental suicide, even though, according to several sources, including John Austin’s 1970 book Hollywood’s Unsolved Mysteries and Ken Schessler’s 1997 book This is Hollywood, no pill bottles or syringes were found in the home. Of the death, Schessler says, “To this day, police are still puzzled as to how the drugs had entered his system, as no means of ingestation were ever found near his body.” It appears that someone’s wires got crossed somewhere along the way, though, because according to the February 8th, 1968 edition of the Los Angeles Times, “a number of stoppered bottles containing prescription drugs were in a medicine cabinet.” Either way, the truth of Adams’ death seems to have been buried along with the young actor and the circumstances surrounding it the fodder of stalkers like me ever since.

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 E.J., from The Movieland Directory website, for informing me of this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The house where Nick Adams died is located at 2126 El Roble Lane in Beverly Hills.

July 11, 2012July 10, 2012

Betty White’s Childhood Home

While doing research on Afton Arms, the apartment building from the 1985 movie The Boys Next Door (which I blogged about here), I came across a page on the Hollywoodland website which stated that, at the age of eight, actress Betty White lived at a home located at 454 North Harper Avenue in Los Angeles. Well, let me tell you, being that this stalker absolutely LOVES, LOVES, LOVES herself some Betty White, I just about fell off my chair with excitement! How had I not previously known that Ms. White grew up in L.A.??

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I actually had the pleasure of meeting Betty at last year’s Emmy Awards, which I was a guest at thanks to my girl Miss Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog. Prior to the show, I had told Pinky that the celeb I most wanted to meet and take a picture with that evening was Betty White, although at the time I was not even sure if she would be attending. So when I spotted her shortly after the ceremony ended, I literally almost started crying I was so excited. The expression on my face in the photograph below is absolutely priceless because it encapsulates EXACTLY how I was feeling at that moment – delirious joy, utter disbelief at who I was standing next to, and on the verge of tears over meeting someone I had idolized for so long. (I think part of the reason that I adore Betty as much as I do – aside from the myriad of obvious reasons – is that her personality is pretty much a carbon copy of my grandma’s, whom I love pretty much more than life itself. ) When I told Betty how much I loved her and what an inspiration I thought she was, she thanked me and said – and I quote – “Oh, how lovely you are to say that.” So darn cute! Sigh. I love, love, love that woman! So when I saw the address for Betty’s childhood home, I immediately added it to my To-Stalk list and finally dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out there this past weekend.

Allan R. Ellenberger, who pens the Hollywoodland blog, came across Betty’s childhood home while compiling information for his 2008 book, Celebrities in the 1930 Census: Household Data of 2,265 U.S. Actors, Musicians, Scientists, Athletes, Writers, Politicians and Other Public Figures. Allan spent over three years researching the 1930 census in order to track down the early residences of some of the U.S.’ most famous notables. According to Allan, Betty lived in the home pictured below with her father, Horace L. White, who was an electrical salesman from Michigan, and her mom, Tess White, who was a homemaker from Illinois. The White family’s census information was taken on April 17th, 1930 and, at the time, the dwelling, which they owned, was worth $10,000. According to Zillow, the property is worth a whopping $1,077,200 today, although I am not sure how accurate that figure is. For some reason, the 1930 census (and it was the only to do so) featured a line item asking if each family owned a radio and, according to Allan’s research, the Whites did. You can read an interesting interview with Allan about his book on the Alt Film Guide website here.

Betty’s former one-story home, which was originally constructed in 1928, boasts 3 bedrooms, 2 baths and 1,625 square feet. Because Allan’s information was limited to the year 1930, I am not sure of when exactly the Whites purchased the property, but my hunch would be that it was in 1928, shortly after the place was built. I am also unsure of when the family sold the residence, but I am guessing it was sometime during Betty’s teenage years being that she attended Beverly Hills High School, which would not have been in this home’s district.

I cannot tell you how exciting it was to see Betty’s childhood house in person and to think that 82 years earlier she had called the place home. So incredibly cool!

On a side-note – I just discovered a new blog called Possessionista and I think I may be in love with it! Dana Weiss, the site’s founder, is a stalker herself, but instead of hunting down locations, she finds clothing that has been seen on celebs and in movies and TV shows. Um, yes please! Of her blog, Dana says “I spend hours neglecting my home, my children, even my well being in order to replicate celebrity style, and find the things I lust after within my means.” I, too, neglect my home and well being (it’s a good thing I don’t have any children!) while obsessively trying to track down locations. You have to check out this post about her hunt for a wedding dress that was featured on Pinterest. A woman after my own heart, I swear! She’s the IAMNOTASTALKER of the celebrity fashion world!

Dana put in some serious elbow grease yesterday trying to help me track down the “love” ring that Emily Maynard has been sporting the past couple of weeks on The Bachelorette. After re-watching Monday’s night episode, though, I finally figured out that it is the Sydney Evan Gold & Pave Diamond Love Ring, although, for some reason, on TV it is very hard to tell that Emily’s ring has diamonds, as you can see below. Too bad the thing retails for $860, because I am absolutely dying for it and my second wedding anniversary with the GC is coming up. Hint, hint, honey!

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here and you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And don’t forget to read my latest post – about low-carb tacos – on my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Betty White’s childhood home is located at 454 North Harper Avenue in Los Angeles, just east of West Hollywood.

May 31, 2012December 6, 2013

The Sand Acre Estate – Where Marilyn Monroe is Rumored to Have Vacationed

A few weeks ago, while doing research on Seward Johnson’s “Forever Marilyn” statue, which I blogged about yesterday, I came across a press release posted on the Visit Palm Springs website and just about passed out over the mention of a desert-area MM location that I had never before heard of! The press release stated, “Marilyn Monroe has many legendary ties to Palm Springs. To name a few, she was photographed and “discovered” by Johnny Hyde from the William Morris Agency at Charlie Farrell’s Racquet Club. She was also rumored to have frequented a Movie Colony estate with Joe DiMaggio, currently known as the Sand Acre Estate, and owned a 1950’s bungalow-style house in Las Palmas.” While I had stalked and blogged about both Charlie Farrell’s Racquet Club and Marilyn’s Las Palmas home, I had somehow never before even heard of the Sand Acre Estate! So I immediately added the place to my To-Stalk list and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there this past Friday afternoon while visiting my parents in the desert.

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When we pulled up to the Sand Acre Estate, which is located in Palm Springs’ Movie Colony neighborhood (LOVE that name!), I was shocked to discover the sheer enormity of the place! As you can see below, it is absolutely gargantuan! And I was even more shocked to discover that the manse is located directly across the street from Cary Grant’s former desert home, which I stalked back in July of last year. How in the heck had I not known about this place??

The Sand Acre Estate, which is currently a vacation rental and special events venue, is surrounded by a tall stucco wall that is topped by even taller hedges making the place extremely private and hidden from view. The stalking gods were definitely smiling down upon us that day, though, because the front gate happened to be standing wide open when we arrived, affording us a tiny peek at the site’s magnificent grounds.

The 3,434-square-foot Spanish-style dwelling, which was originally built in 1933 and recently underwent a year-long restoration, boasts 5 bedrooms, 6 baths, exposed beam ceilings, a media room, a large gourmet kitchen, a carriage suite complete with its own bedroom, a tennis court, a pool and Jacuzzi, numerous en-suite wood-burning fireplaces, a gym, and a 1.02-acre corner plot of land.

As you can see below, the property also boasts some breathtaking views of the San Jacinto Mountains. You can check out some fabulous interior photographs of the home here.

The rumors of Marilyn and Joe vacationing at the Sand Acre Estate are, sadly, just that – rumors. Because there is nothing concrete to prove that the couple ever set foot on the premises, Larry Rener, who manages the property, is quoted as saying, “We go with the rumor.” The tower-shaped area pictured below is the room where Marilyn and Joe are purported to have stayed during their frequent visits. And while I am not sure what the starlet’s link to the property was, if one ever even existed, it is definitely easy to picture her vacationing there, unwinding by the pool with her new husband while protected from the prying eyes of the ever-present and hounding media. Besides Marilyn, the Sand Acre Estate also has another Hollywood connection – Linda Gray, Donna Mills, and Morgan Fairchild once posed for a photo shoot there for the cover story of Palm Springs Life magazine’s January 2009 issue.

And on a very exciting side-note – fellow stalker Lavonna texted me on Friday afternoon to let me know that my fan question for Colin Egglesfield on Extra had finally aired! Whoo hoo!

As you can see below, I had quite a bit of fun watching the filming, especially when Colin showed us his AMAZE-BALLS Tom Cruise impersonation. Big THANK YOU to Lavonna for telling me about the episode and for making the screen captures that appear in this post.

Be sure to “Like” IAMNOTASTALKER on Facebook here and “Friend” me on my personal page here. You can also check out the IAMNOTASTALKER About Me page here. And you can follow me on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Sand Acre Estate, where Marilyn Monroe is said to have vacationed with Joe DiMaggio, is located at 953 North Avenida Palmas in the Movie Colony neighborhood of Palm Springs. You can visit the property’s vacation rental website here. Cary Grant’s former desert home is located right across the street at 928 North Avenida Palmas.