A Potluck of Residents
Recently, out on a walk, I spotted this lovely building:
And then noticed this plaque:
Could this be true? Did famed architect John Lautner live out his golden years in these lovely streamlined deco apartments? Considering this was a man who created cinematic villain’s lairs, atomic age palaces for the unbothered, soaring visions of the future in the Chemosphere (Leonard Malin Residence), the Rainbow House (Garcia Residence), Silvertop (Reiner-Burchill Residence), and the Sheats-Goldstein residence…these apartments are humble in comparison.
We aren’t going to talk about those houses today, though- I’m more interested in this quieter moment, this last resting spot. But before we get into this building, let’s do a little background. John Lautner studied under Frank Lloyd Wright before moving to Los Angeles with his first wife, MaryBud, in the late 1930s. He built his own family’s home in Silver Lake and worked steadily on his own projects (still assisting on Wright’s works as well). After a few years of working with architect Douglas Hannold, they parted ways in the late 40s (supposedly amicably). John proceeded to divorce MaryBud and marry Elizabeth- Douglas Hannold’s wife (hence the supposedly amicably) in 1948.
By 1954, John and Elizabeth were living where the above apartments now stand (and there’s some vague information that this was previously the Honnolds’ home when John moved in) and John had renovated and added on to the original house from 1924, he used the back house/garage as office space. They hosted a fundraiser to save Watts Towers here in 1959.
In February of 1960, the house burned to the ground, believed to have started from a cigarette left burning in the living room. 18-year-old son, Michael, was the first to awaken- trapped in his second-story bedroom by the flames, he climbed out his window, skittered across the roof, and dropped to the ground, banging on the Lautners’ first-floor bedroom window to wake them. Linton St. Clair, the family’s 60-year-old devoted groundskeeper, lived in the back house and was racing with the Lautners in their attempts to dash through the flames and salvage items from the house when he collapsed on the lawn, dead of a heart attack. The house burned to ruins, and nearly everything personal was lost. Lautner’s work was unscathed in the back office, but what an astonishing level of tragedy. He redesigned the back house for temporary living and moved his office to Hollywood Blvd.
These apartments were completed on the ruins in 1965, and- rather grimly- advertised as the Ivory Tower “on the site of the former home of architect John Lautner.”
But let’s go back to these 26 units, built in 1941, and who else lived there. I arranged a lovely walk with my friend who has lived there for several years and he told me more about some of the legacy residents.
Earlier, in 1957, Doodles Weaver was living here when he married his fourth wife Rita. Winstead Sheffield “Doodles” Weaver was the son of industrialist Sylvester Weaver (and Doodles was uncle to Sigourney). He was a rubber-faced comedian who made over 90 films, wrote for Mad Magazine, and was a star of Spike Jones and his City Slickers comedy band. One of his breakout bits was his parody of the William Tell Overture as a horse race announcer. It’s one of those golden age comedy moments that still holds up (tangent upon tangent, but there’s a loose- very loose- theory that this was potentially the inspiration for the nonsense title of Blur’s song “Beetlebum”- I personally don’t agree, but I think it’s an admirable reach!).
Sadly, after years of painful illness, Doodles shot himself in the chest at his Burbank home in 1983.
At one point, my friend said, Pamela Des Barres, author and queen of the groupies lived here. In Pamela’s book, Take Another Little Piece of My Heart, she quotes from her diary in 1975 about her newlywed days with Michael Des Barres saying they found “a pink and green old Hollywood bungalow right above Franklin on El Cerrito…lots of bamboo plants and sunshine.” This block now is primarily apartments, and this building isn’t exactly a bungalow, but it’s certainly quaint and lush, and I’ll defer to the current resident legacy.
Pamela’s friend, model-turned-groupie and also author Catherine James lived here as well. Catherine had a son (with musician Denny Laine of The Moody Blues and Wings), and he grew up here with her.
In 1990, we have another member of LA’s music scene fringe: writer and public access host Art Fein. Art produced a Blasters album, managed the Cramps at one point, and the cult film Eating Raoul was filmed in a previous apartment of his. He was living here while hosting his cable access show “Poker Party” and wow, what a treasure trove of Los Angeles music history that is- here’s a fantastic interview with Brian Wilson on Poker Party in 1988.
My friend told me it has always been a place for creatives, that “Will and Grace” was created there by a former resident. Actor Robert Culp lived here in his later years, and, in a funny twist, one of his wives had also lived here years before.
These are all moments, fragments of lives, intrinsic to the transitional nature of apartments. Without a doubt, there are more stories, glories, and names that would become big (or once were) that crossed through this particular sunny courtyard. One of my favorite theories in comparing New York and Los Angeles is that New York is a melting pot, but L.A. is a mosaic. These bits of oral history from neighbors, the mentions in old newspapers, the smallest shreds- I gather them up with care and make my own composite, a larger installation art of the lives lived in the Hollywood Hills.
When reading biographies, I tend to gloss over the beginning and the end, I want to know the highlights- the meat of the life worth writing about, not the marinating and the bones and gristle. However, when I walk and look at houses, and then learn about their ghosts, I get attached and become invested in all the ingredients, the slices and snippets.
Lately, I’ve been having trouble finding the thread, the lede, the meat. One of my biggest frustrations is falling in love with a beautiful home and finding the former residents to be just boring old doctors, living without any scandal or splashy headlines. It’s exasperating, this is Hollywood, these extraordinary homes deserve residents that can match the magnificence of the structures! This specific building is emblematic of my current state of mind– consisting of these bite-sized delicious bits that are sufficient in sustaining me, a research diet of appetizers instead of a proper five-course story.
But back to Lautner (the prime rib, as it were) — I’ve been skimming and digging and I can’t find any evidence disproving this plaque. But here’s the reveal- these apartments are next door to the lot where his house burned, 15 years before he moved in here. Personally, I can’t imagine surviving a fire and returning to live next door, to look at the ghost of one’s own life. The reverent pieces about John Lautner are focused on his work, there’s no mention given to his daily life as he aged. Audiences care who Pamela Des Barres dated, not where she cooked her newlywed dinners.
But I’ll argue that these bits of mundanity and humanity amplify the brightness of the stars of our stories, discovering the Doodles Weavers and the Art Feins with the Des Barres and the Lautners. I like these quiet moments in a glittery life, seeing where one goes when the spotlight is turned off, the intimacy of their places of respite, in seeing where such public figures called home. In the mixed bag of flavors presented here, this lovely building is full of spice.