Weber and Sturges
Rise and fall and slice and dice of the house of writer/directors
Hi pals,
The other day I saw a photo loosely dated from the early 50s, looking up Vine from Sunset and in the background was a sturdy large white house.
I didn’t recognize it as one that currently stands, so I thought it could be one of two that made way for the freeway. Now, to preface, I don’t know if it’s actually either house, but I like both stories, and because I don’t have pictures (one has been demolished, the other was moved but is extremely privacy hedged), it’s a perfect story for dipping back into a newsletter! (It’s been a while, but I’ve had some big sad family stuff that we don’t need to go into and, well, your grace is appreciated)
We are going to talk about the one that was moved, which was originally known as the Montgomery mansion. Built in 1916 for a Mrs. Edna Montgomery, it became more interesting when Lois Weber purchased it in 1921.
Let’s go back a bit to discuss Lois Weber. Originally from Pennsylvania, she was a musically gifted child and left home to join the Church Army workers, preaching and singing on street corners until the group disbanded. She then toured the country as a prodigy pianist. After an unfortunate incident with a broken key one night, she abandoned the piano (one could say that part of her life ended on a sour note) and began to focus on her singing and acting. She became involved in the theater and met and married a member of her troupe, Wendell Philips Smalley, in 1904.
After the marriage, Lois was making a nice little home in New York, writing screenplays in her spare time. She was initially hired to sing for Gaumont Film Company, but her film scenarios were good, and soon that became a full-time job. Her husband joined her at Gaumont and the two began writing and directing short films together as The Smalleys. They worked steadily in New York for a few studios, including Rex Motion Picture Company, and then moved west to the blossoming industry in California. Rex was swept up into what became Universal and Carl Laemmle embraced Lois’s talents.
1913 was a pioneer year for Lois Weber. She was elected mayor of the newly formed Universal City in 1913 (fun reminder that Los Angeles has never had a female mayor). She also became the first woman to direct a full-length feature, The Merchant of Venice. The Smalleys made films focused on themes of morality, including works on birth control, poverty, and capital punishment and Lois staunchly believed that film could influence current culture for the better.
She was well respected as one of the top talents in Hollywood, and in 1916 she became the only woman elected to the Motion Pictures Directors Association. In 1917, she wanted to go further and started her own production company. The Smalleys purchased an estate in Hollywood and erected a fully functioning studio in the middle of a neighborhood (Santa Monica and Vermont, now apartments). Lois had negotiated a great distribution deal with Universal for herself, and for a time was the highest-paid director in Hollywood. She began amassing real estate in Hollywood as a side hobby to her film career. She experimented with sound and shooting on location, and her films began to focus more on the intricacies of marriage rather than the wider social dramas.
In 1921, the Smalleys bought the Montgomery house in Hollywood. In 1922, perhaps explaining her new focus on marital stories, their marriage dissolved. Lois was believed to have had something of a breakdown, or “nervous collapse,” and Phillips found a new wife and the production company folded. She kept the Montgomery house, remarried and continued making films, but with significantly less success. She demolished the studio house and built a small apartment court in its place. Film historians have posited she needed his male influence to steady her (ok) even though she wrote everything, directed most of it, and he never made anything after he left her.
The residence house was repeatedly robbed (at least four times between the purchase in 1921 and 1930) and by the time Lois died in 1939, she had lost the majority of her fortune. In her career, she made over 100 films (sometimes believed to be more like anywhere from 200–400) as a writer and director, though less than 20 were preserved, and for many years she was lost to history. Dorothy Arzner stepped in as the next big female director, and was a significant trailblazer, but her path may not have been possible without Lois Weber.
So what happened to the house? The bank took the Montgomery house in 1936 from Lois, shortly before her death.
Well, we have another writer/director who snatched it up. In the 30s, around the corner in the Hollywood Dell, a young playwright by the name of Preston Sturges had a beautiful home. His star was on the rise, and he was at this house in 1933 when he sold The Power and the Glory to Fox, a solo endeavor that Jesse Lasky called the most perfect script he’d ever seen. Sturges continued to work in the studio system until the late 30s, when he traded his screenplay for The Great McGinty to Paramount for a rumored ten dollars in exchange for being able to direct it himself. Profitable, and a modest hit, but it won Sturges the first Original Screenplay Academy Award.
Sturges went on a noteworthy run of success the next few years with The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story, Sullivan’s Travels, Hail the Conquering Hero, The Miracle at Morgan’s Creek, and Christmas in July- all quick talking clever and messy slapstick hits. He had a slew of marriages, and fought regularly with studio heads, and had opened the Player’s Club on the Sunset Strip in 1940. A celebrity playground and supper club that by all accounts was pretty fun, but extremely badly managed (more about the Player’s Club here).
At one point, Preston Sturges was practically untouchable, one of the highest paid men in town. But when a star burns too brightly, it becomes the story of Icarus, and Sturges’s star flew a bit too close to the sun. The restaurant, the wives, his control issues, the output of films, and then the contentious relationships with the studio. He left Paramount, feeling untouchable, but couldn’t quite find the easy financial support he needed. He fell in with Howard Hughes, a regular at the Player’s Club, and while that gave him full creative power as a writer/producer/director, you know how things tend to go with eccentric rich guys (not well). In 1946, third wife Louise filed for divorce, citing his ungovernable temper and cruel disposition and she sued for the house. They divorced, but the Montgomery/Weber house was a rare win for Sturges.
A few years later, the 101 loomed, and this house was smack dab in its path. Somehow Sturges was able to sell the land to the city for $100,000 and in 1951 he cut the hard fought house into thirds and moved it to its current location, near Runyon Canyon, a couple doors down from the house that Joan Didion would rent nearly twenty years later.
After Sturges died, the house changed hands a few times. Once owned by Swedish director Dieter “Dee” Trattman, who took his earnings from Thompson Twins and Donna Summer videos and built his own little real estate empire that ended in a contentious ownership battle with a longtime property manager (this house was in the lawsuit), and then renovated in 2009 and sold by action star Jeremy Renner. After seeing some of the gorgeous houses Fred Durst has bought and flipped, no one in renovations surprises me.
One interesting realtor lie that sticks with this house is that Chaplin had his first wedding in the “gentleman’s room” here. His first wife was young Mildred Harris, and he married her thinking she was pregnant. Mildred was in a few of Lois Weber’s films, so it was entirely plausible that the Smalleys, and their focus on family and marriage and ethics would host a small ceremony. Except Chaplin and Harris were married in 1918, and Lois didn’t buy the house until 1921.
The house still stands in its second location today, absolutely shrouded in secrecy, but it’s incredible how much it has endured! The original location now is the tiny fenced-in dog park under the overpass at the top of Vine and Franklin. I don’t need to point out the parallels between Lois Weber and Preston Sturges, but, as always, I love seeing the same energy repeating, as it often goes in these hills, the houses as the gatekeepers.
And to show I’m not being hyperbolic about the privacy, here’s the best glimpse legally allowed
Again, on a personal note, thank you for your grace and patience and deep thanks to everyone who has sent condolences, prayers and well wishes. I wish things were different, but hopefully I’ll be back to a regular level of storytelling again soon.