Daniels.
Norma Talmadge’s place at 1038 Ocean Front had a particularly distinguished list of inhabitants. Randolph Scott and Cary Grant had lived there in the mid-thirties, and Cary had kept the place when he married Barbara Hutton. After that, Brian Aherne lived there; Howard Hughes rented the place for a time, as did Grace Kelly. Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate lived there as well. Douglas Fairbanks was a couple of doors down in a house he had initially bought as a weekend getaway, but converted to his full-time residence after his divorce from Mary Pickford.
Norma Talmadge is forgotten today, which is sad, because she was a fine emotional actress, and one of the three or four biggestfemale stars of the silent era. (The reason nobody remembers her is that very few of her films survive.)
When she built the place in the late 1920s, she was married to Joe Schenck. I’ve always wondered whether the Norman design of the house was an elaborate pun on her name. The interior was decorated mostly in a Spanish motif, although Norma’s bathroom was done with tiles from Malibu Pottery, which was among the most beautiful work ever done in that medium. Interestingly, Norma had almost nothing in her house that indicated she was a movie star, other than a portrait of her over the fireplace in the living room.
Norma lived there for about five years, after which she divorced Schenck and took up with Gilbert Roland, a good friend of mine in later years. Gil always regarded Norma as the great love of his life, which, for a compulsive ladies’ man, is really saying something.
Although Norma’s career ended after only two sound pictures, she had held on to her money—something that couldn’t be said of a lot of silent film stars. She had two other beachfront properties in Santa Monica, as well as other real estate investments around Los Angeles.
These Santa Monica and Malibu houses—always excluding Marion Davies’s place, which could have sheltered an army—looked quite modest. They still do—most of them are still there, although they’ve been heavily altered over the years. Most of them were a complete change of pace from the Spanish influence that was predominant in Hollywood. Some derived from Cape Cod style; others reflected a Newport or Monterey influence.
If Hollywood was prone to strange fads—the famously arrogant director Josef von Sternberg had a house designed by Richard Neutra in Chatsworth that looked like an aluminum pillbox that justhappened to have a moat around it—it had an even stranger love of huge parties, as if in defiance of the Depression. Hearst loved to throw dos at San Simeon, but also at Marion Davies’s huge house in Santa Monica, which the naive often assumed was a resort hotel. Actually, it was the only competition Harold Lloyd had for the most lavish movie star estate.
The Santa Monica beach house was by no means Marion’s primary residence. That was actually a Spanish-style mansion at 1700 Lexington Road in Beverly Hills. The Beverly Hills house was Marion’s preferred venue for parties, simply because the Santa Monica house was too damn big—it could supposedly hold two thousand guests, which sounds more like Buckingham Palace than Santa Monica, but then Marion’s place wasn’t much smaller than Buckingham Palace.
There was a small-town atmosphere in Hollywood then. One or two nights a week, Davies would invite a few close friends to her place. Since her close friends were named Chaplin and Fairbanks, it may sound like an intimidating evening, but the evenings mostly consisted of dinner and charades. A few weeks later, Chaplin or Fairbanks would return the favor. Sometimes Marion would hire a bus, fill it with ten or twenty friends, plenty of food, maybe a musician or two, and take off for Santa Monica beach, where they would have a late picnic and a bonfire.
William Randolph Hearst built the Santa Monica palace for Davies in 1928, the last, flamboyant year of the silent era. Money
Norma Talmadge’s place at 1038 Ocean Front had a particularly distinguished list of inhabitants. Randolph Scott and Cary Grant had lived there in the mid-thirties, and Cary had kept the place when he married Barbara Hutton. After that, Brian Aherne lived there; Howard Hughes rented the place for a time, as did Grace Kelly. Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate lived there as well. Douglas Fairbanks was a couple of doors down in a house he had initially bought as a weekend getaway, but converted to his full-time residence after his divorce from Mary Pickford.
Norma Talmadge is forgotten today, which is sad, because she was a fine emotional actress, and one of the three or four biggestfemale stars of the silent era. (The reason nobody remembers her is that very few of her films survive.)
When she built the place in the late 1920s, she was married to Joe Schenck. I’ve always wondered whether the Norman design of the house was an elaborate pun on her name. The interior was decorated mostly in a Spanish motif, although Norma’s bathroom was done with tiles from Malibu Pottery, which was among the most beautiful work ever done in that medium. Interestingly, Norma had almost nothing in her house that indicated she was a movie star, other than a portrait of her over the fireplace in the living room.
Norma lived there for about five years, after which she divorced Schenck and took up with Gilbert Roland, a good friend of mine in later years. Gil always regarded Norma as the great love of his life, which, for a compulsive ladies’ man, is really saying something.
Although Norma’s career ended after only two sound pictures, she had held on to her money—something that couldn’t be said of a lot of silent film stars. She had two other beachfront properties in Santa Monica, as well as other real estate investments around Los Angeles.
These Santa Monica and Malibu houses—always excluding Marion Davies’s place, which could have sheltered an army—looked quite modest. They still do—most of them are still there, although they’ve been heavily altered over the years. Most of them were a complete change of pace from the Spanish influence that was predominant in Hollywood. Some derived from Cape Cod style; others reflected a Newport or Monterey influence.
If Hollywood was prone to strange fads—the famously arrogant director Josef von Sternberg had a house designed by Richard Neutra in Chatsworth that looked like an aluminum pillbox that justhappened to have a moat around it—it had an even stranger love of huge parties, as if in defiance of the Depression. Hearst loved to throw dos at San Simeon, but also at Marion Davies’s huge house in Santa Monica, which the naive often assumed was a resort hotel. Actually, it was the only competition Harold Lloyd had for the most lavish movie star estate.
The Santa Monica beach house was by no means Marion’s primary residence. That was actually a Spanish-style mansion at 1700 Lexington Road in Beverly Hills. The Beverly Hills house was Marion’s preferred venue for parties, simply because the Santa Monica house was too damn big—it could supposedly hold two thousand guests, which sounds more like Buckingham Palace than Santa Monica, but then Marion’s place wasn’t much smaller than Buckingham Palace.
There was a small-town atmosphere in Hollywood then. One or two nights a week, Davies would invite a few close friends to her place. Since her close friends were named Chaplin and Fairbanks, it may sound like an intimidating evening, but the evenings mostly consisted of dinner and charades. A few weeks later, Chaplin or Fairbanks would return the favor. Sometimes Marion would hire a bus, fill it with ten or twenty friends, plenty of food, maybe a musician or two, and take off for Santa Monica beach, where they would have a late picnic and a bonfire.
William Randolph Hearst built the Santa Monica palace for Davies in 1928, the last, flamboyant year of the silent era. Money
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