unreal estate by michael gross - excerpt

8/3/2019 Unreal Estate by Michael Gross - Excerpt

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Copyight 2011 by Idee Fixe Ltd.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Broadway Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group,

a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

Broadway Books and the Broadway Books colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Sheldon Harnick for permission to reprint lyrics from If I Were a

Rich Man by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN: 978-0-7679-3265-3

eISBN: 978-0-7679-3266-0

Printed in the United States of America

Illustrations and endpaper map by Fred Haynes

Jacket design by Jennifer OConnor

Jacket photography by Ian Cumming/Axiom Photographic Agency/Getty Images

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

First Edition


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CAST OF CHARACTERS

This book is about sixteen great estates in the best neighborhoods of Los An-

gelesthe contiguous communities of Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Holmby Hills,

and Beverly Park. Of those, seven emerged as the books main characters.

Five are in Beverly Hills: Grayhall (1100 Carolyn Way), Greenacres (1740

Green Acres Place), Greystone (905 Loma Vista Drive),The Knoll (1130

Schuyler Road), and 9481 Sunset Boulevard, named Sunset House by its

latest owner. In Holmby Hills, there is Owlwood (141 South Carolwood

Drive), so named by owner number eight, and in Bel Air, Casa Encantada

(10644 Bellagio Road), the name used by owner number two. The street

addresses of some of these estates have changed over the years for reasons

ranging from subdivision to privacy concerns. To aid identification, they are

generally referred to by their current addresses.

These trophy homes are not historic relics. All but Greystone are occu-

pied today, and several continue to grow. The owners of Sunset House justswallowed a third neighboring lot. Owlwood now incorporates two more of

the great estates on the famous 10000 block of Sunset Boulevard (10060 and

10100 Sunset, both demolished in 2002).

Those last two ghost housesgone but not forgottenare also featured

players in this story, as are seven secondary estates, some still standing, some

not, that are intimately connected to the history of this linked bracelet of

gilded neighborhoods. But those sixteen estates are really only windows onto

the fabulous, sometimes glorious, but as often toxic and corrupt lives of thereal subjects of the bookthe owners and occupants of those homes over the


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xiv { Cast of Characters

fueled their lust for land, power, prominence, and opulenceand have made

these incredibly unreal estates very real, indeed.

PIONEERS AND FOUNDERS

Brian Adler:Developer of Beverly Park North.

Margaret and Stanley Anderson: Mother-and-son proprietors of the

Hollywood Hotel and founder-proprietors of the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Alphonzo Edward Bell:Oilman, founder of Bel Air, owner of the SantaMonica Mountain Park Ranch, and second owner of La Quinta, which he

renamed Capo di Monte (since demolished).

Elizabeth, Minnewa,andAlphonzo Bell Jr.:Children of Alphonzo Bell.

Edson Benedict:A pioneer settler of Benedict Canyon.

Pierce Benedict:Son of Edson and the first president of Beverly Hills.

Leonard I. Bursten:First, failed developer of Beverly Park; former pros-

ecutor; convicted tax evader.

Charles Adelbert Canfield:Edward Dohenys partner in the oil business.

Leader of the cofounders of Beverly Hills.

Harry Chandler and Harrison Gray Otis: Fathers of the Los Angeles

Times; land owners and investors. Chandler was a cofounder of the city of

Hollywood.

Wilbur David Cook Jr.:Landscape architect of Beverly Hills.

Daisy CanfieldandJacob Morris Jake Danziger:Daughter of Charles

Canfield and her husband, a lawyer and cofounder of the Beverly HillsSpeedway. First owners of Bel Air. Builders of La Quinta at 801 Bel-Air

Road (since demolished).

I. Irving Davidson: Washington fixer. Co-owner of land that became

Beverly Park.

Edward L. Doheny:Pioneer Los Angeles oilman, builder of Greystone

estate.

Allen R. Glick:Teamsters associate, casino owner and mob front, failed

second developer of Beverly Park.Elliot Gottfurcht:Developer of Beverly Park South.


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Cast of Characters } xv

Dorothy Dolly, Liliore, and Burton Burtie Green: Daughters of

Burton Green.

Hyman Green:Teamsters associate, co-owner of land that became Bev-erly Park.

Henry HammelandAndrew Denker:Later owners of Rancho Rodeo de

las Aguas, then known as the Hammel-Denker Ranch.

Henry Edward Huntington:Son of railroad pioneer Collis Huntington,

early Los Angeles trolley car mogul, founding partner in Rodeo Land and

Water.

Haroldand Edwin Janss:Cofounders of Holmby Hills, Westwood, and

Westwood Village; owners of Conejo Ranch (later Thousand Oaks, Califor-nia); benefactors of UCLA.

Arthur Letts:Cofounder of Holmby Hills.

Gladys Letts:Daughter of Arthur and Florence Letts and wife of Harold

Janss.

Llewelyn Arthur Nares:First estate owner in Beverly Hills.

Florence Letts Quinn:Estranged wife and heiress of Arthur Letts; later

married Charles Quinn.

Arthur Pillsbury:First city engineer of Beverly Hills.

Moses Sherman:With a brother-in-law, Huntingtons partner in the Pas-

adena and Altadena Railway. Cofounder of Hollywood, founder of Sherman

(later West Hollywood).

Maria Rita Valdez:The first settler and owner of Rancho Rodeo de las

Aguas, which later became Beverly Hills.

Max Whittier:Oilman, partner of Burton Green, cofounder of Beverly

Hills.Benjamin Davis Don Benito Wilson:An early owner of Rancho San

Jose de Buenos Ayres.

John Wolfskill:Forty-niner and later owner of Rancho San Jose de Bue-

nos Ayres.


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xvi { Cast of Characters

FEATURED HOUSES, OWNERS, AND OCCUPANTS

Beverly Hills

Shadow Hill/Grayhall (1100 Carolyn Way)

Harry Dana Lombard:Boston banker, Carole Lombards godfather.

Douglas Fairbanks:First actor-resident of Beverly Hills, owner of Pick-

fair.

Caroline Carrie Canfieldand Silsby Spalding:A daughter of Charles

Canfield and her husband, the first mayor of Beverly Hills.

Amos Johnstone:Scion of a local real estate family.George Hamilton:Actor.

Bernard Cornfeld:Retired mutual fund founder, entrepreneur.

Steven Macallum Powers:Penny-stock manipulator, luxury home rede-

veloper, playboy, best friend of Hugh Hefner.

Philippe Boutboul:Tunisian-born French electronics retailer, special ad-

visor to the president of Burkina Faso, mansion redeveloper.

Mark, Suzan,and Darcy LaPier Hughes:Herbalife founder, nutritional

supplement guru, alleged pyramid scammer, and his third and fourth wives,

both beauty contest winners.

Moussaand Mahnaz Lilli Mehdizadeh:Persian-born businessman and his

wife, a member of the Elghanayan real estate dynasty of Tehran and New York.

9755 Sunset Boulevard (since demolished)

Max Whittier:See Pioneers and Founders.Samuel Berch:Dairy and ice cream mogul, founder of Arden Farms.

Leo Hartfield:Son-in-law of Samuel Berch.

Dino Fabbri:Milanese publisher.

Mohammed and Dena al-Fassi: Brother- and sister-in-law of Saudi

Prince Turki bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud.

Greenacres (1740 Green Acres Place)Harold Lloyd:Silent film comedian.


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Cast of Characters } xvi i

Bernard Solomonand Dona Powell:Budget record mogul and his jew-

elry- and costume-collector wife.

Tedand Susie Field:Marshall Field heir, race car team owner, and enter-tainment executive and his wife.

Ron Burkle:Supermarket entrepreneur turned billionaire investor.

Greystone (501 Doheny Road)

Edward L. Ned Doheny Jr.:Son of the oilman.

Lucy Doheny Battson:Ned Dohenys wife; later, his widow and builder

of The Knoll.Leigh Battson:Lucy Dohenys second husband.

Henry Crown:Chicago industrialist, partner of Conrad Hilton, alleged

Mafia associate (never moved in).

The Knoll (1130 Schuyler Road)

Lucy Dohenyand Leigh Battson:See Greystone.

Dino De Laurentiis:Film producer.

Kenny Rogers:Singer; owner of first lot sold in Beverly Park.

Marvinand Barbara Davis:Oilman and owner of Twentieth Century

Fox and his socialite wife.

Eric Smidt:Harbor Freight Tools hardware mogul.

9481 Sunset Boulevard (Sunset House)Francisca Bernard (Mrs. Dionicio) Botiller:Builder, wife of heir to a

Spanish land grant fortune.

Frankand Cecilia Botillerand Ida Botiller Lindley:Children of Fran-

cisca and Dionicio Botiller.

Jack Royal Young Lindley:Brother of Loretta Young, informally adopted

son of Ida Botiller Lindley.

Dorothy Wellborn Dolly Green:See Pioneers and Founders.

Neil Steere McCarthy: Lawyer for Howard Hughes, L. B. Mayer, andothers; polo player; cofounder of the Beverly Hills Speedway. Lover of Dolly


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xvii i { Cast of Characters

Stewartand Lynda Resnick:Former owners of the Franklin Mint; own-

ers of FIJI Water, Teleflora, fruit and nut farms, and other enterprises.

Bel Air

750 Bel-Air Road (the Beverly Hillbillies mansion)

Lynn Atkinson:Public works builder.

Arnold S. Kirkeby:Hotelier.

A. Jerrold Perenchio:Agent, event promoter, entertainment mogul.

10644 Bellagio Road (later Casa Encantada and Bellagio House)

Hilda Olsen Boldt Weber:Former nurse, widow of glass bottle mogul

Charles Boldt, later married to Joseph Otto Weber. Builder and first owner.

Conrad N. Hilton:Hotelier, great-grandfather of Paris Hilton.

Nickyand Barron Hilton:Sons of Conrad. The former briefly married

actress Elizabeth Taylor. The latter is the grandfather of Paris Hilton.

David Murdock:Conglomerateur and head of Dole Food Company.

Gary Winnick:Former Drexel Burnham Lambert investment banker,

founder of the defunct telecommunications firm Global Crossing.

10539 Bellagio Road

Sol Wurtzel:Movie mogul. Builder and first owner.Woody Feuert:Business partner of costume designer Adrian.

Anthony Norvell:Astrologer, psychic, metaphysician.

Howard Hughes, Elvis Presley, Prince Rainier of Monaco:Sublessors.

Reginald Owen:British character actor.

Dolly Green:See Pioneers and Founders.

Diane Hunt Stockmar:Alleged illegitimate daughter of Dolly Green and

Neil McCarthy.

Bill andMaria Bell: Executive producer of The Bold and the Beautifuland The Young and the Restlessand his wife, an arts philanthropist.


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Cast of Characters } xix

364 St. Cloud Road

Louis W. Zimmerman: Financier.

Casey Robinsonand Tamara Toumanova:Writer and producer at Twen-tieth Century Fox and his wife, a ballerina.

Tony Curtisand Christine Kaufmann:See 141 South Carolwood.

Sonnyand Cher Bono:See 141 South Carolwood.

Larry Flynt:Founder, Flynt Publications, and publisher, Hustler.

Holmby Hills

375 North Carolwood Drive (since demolished)

Harold Janss:Builder and first owner (see Pioneers and Founders).

GregoryandVeronique Peck:Actor and his wife.


Edwin Janss:Builder and first owner.

Charles Reese Jack Warde:Insurance executive.

William Osco:Pornographic movie producer; husband of Jackie Kong,

director.

Ghazi Aita:See 141 South Carolwood.

Roland Arnall:See 141 South Carolwood.


Hubert Prior Rudy Valle:First owner, never occupied the house.

Jayne Mansfieldand Mickey Hargitay:Actress and her bodybuilder hus-

band.

Harold Greenlin:Former carny and vaudeville, burlesque, and porno-

graphic theater owner.

Engelbert Humperdinck:Singer.

Ghazi Aita:See 141 South Carolwood.Roland Arnall:See 141 South Carolwood.


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xx { Cast of Characters

10236 Charing Cross Road (now the Playboy mansion)

Arthur Letts Jr.:Son of Arthur Letts, builder and first owner.

Hugh M. Hefner:Founder of Playboymagazine.

594 South Mapleton Drive (since demolished)

Edna Lettsand Malcolm McNaghten:Daughter of Arthur Letts and her

husband. Builders and first owners.

Harry Bing Crosby:Singer and actor.

Patrick Frawley Jr.: Owner of Technicolor, Paper Mate, and Schick;

right-wing activist.Aaronand Candy Spelling:Producer and his wife; they tore down the

house and replaced it.

141 South Carolwood (now incorporates 10060 and 10100 Sunset):

Florence M. Lettsand Charles Quinn:Builders and first owners (also see

Pioneers and Founders).

Joseph W. Drown:Partner of Conrad Hilton, hotelier, first husband of

Elizabeth Bettye Avery, later Libby Keck, creator and longtime owner of

the Bel-Air and Ocean House hotels (the latter the former William Ran-

dolph HearstMarion Davies beach house in Santa Monica).

Joe Schenck:Movie pioneer, alleged lover and mentor of Marilyn Mon-

roe, pardoned convicted perjurer.

William Myron Keck:Founder and president of Superior Oil; father of

Howard Keck, the second husband of Elizabeth Avery Drown.Tony Curtis: Actor, husband of actresses Janet Leigh and Christine

Kaufmann and model Leslie Penny Allen.

Sonnyand Cher Bono:Entertainers.

Cherand Gregg Allman:Entertainers.

Ralphand Chase Mishkin:Carpet company owner, theater producer.

Ghaziand Salma Aita:Syrian-born middleman, hotel owner, and inves-

tor and his wife.

Rolandand Dawn Arnall:Savings and loan owner and subprime mort-gage pioneer and his second wife.


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Cast of Characters } xxi

OTHER NOTABLE CHARACT ERS

Alfredand Betsy Bloomingdale:Department store heir, credit card mo-gul, and Reagan kitchen cabinet member and his socialite wife.

Roland Coate Sr.:Architect of The Knoll.

Vince Conti:Pimp, actor.

Hernando Courtright:Manager and owner of the Beverly Hills and Bev-

erly Wilshire hotels. Close friend of Dolly Green.

James Dolena:Architect of 10644 Bellagio Road.

Robert Farquhar:Architect of 141 South Carolwood and Daisy Dan-

zigers Crestmount.Heidi Fleiss:Waitress, prostitute, madame, girlfriend of Bernie Cornfeld.

Miles Gray:Haberdashery heir and husband of Minnewa Bell and Burtie

Green.

William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies:Proprietor of the Los

Angeles Examinerand Evening Heraldand his mistress. Owned 1011 Beverly

Drive and 415 Pacific Coast Highway (later the Ocean House hotel and now

site of the Annenberg Community Beach House).

Sumner Huntand Silas Burns:Architects of Grayhall.

Charles Hopper:Head of sales in Bel Air during the Depression and

World War II.

Howard Hughes:Texas oil heir, movie producer, aircraft manufacturer,

airline owner, noted bachelor and eccentric.

Gordon Kaufmann:Architect of Greystone, 10060 and 10100 Sunset,

375 North Carolwood, 594 South Mapleton.

Atwater Kent: Radio pioneer, inventor, engineer, party host, and thirdand last owner-occupant of 801 Bel-Air Road.

Sidney Korshak:Lawyer; middleman between the Chicago Mafia and

unions, Los Angeles investors, and Hollywood studios and producers.

Francis Xavier Lourdou:Architect of 9481 Sunset Boulevard.

Walter McCarty:Cofounder of the Beverly Hills Speedway, founder of

the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

Colleen Moore: First actress to own a home in Bel Air.

Antonio Moreno:Silent film actor, second husband of Daisy CanfieldDanziger.


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xxii { Cast of Characters

Wallace Neff: Early architectural draftsman in Beverly Hills. Architect of

Pickfair renovations, Enchanted Hill, and 10539 Bellagio Road.

Hugh Plunkett: Personal secretary and presumed murderer of NedDoheny.

Terence Harold Robsjohn-Gibbings: Interior designer for 10644 Bel-

lagio Road.

Enrique Heini Schondube: Mexican industrial heir. Third husband of

Dolly Green.

Sumner Spaulding:Architect of Greenacres.

Fred Thomsonand Frances Marion:Cowboy star and his wife, a screen-

writer. Builders of Enchanted Hill.Paul Trousdale: Developer of the Doheny Ranch as Trousdale Estates

and other subdivisions.

A NOTE ON GEOGRAPHY

While New York City is defined to a great extent by a contained, vertical

geography, and in most of Manhattan at least, an easy-to-comprehend nu-

merical grid, Los Angeles is typically characterized by the word sprawl; it is

horizontal and both historically and geographically uncontained. But despite

the fact that non-Angelenos find the place a geographical bafflement, it has

its own logic.

East is downtown, where Westsidersthe wealthy residents of Beverly

Hills (its own city, surrounded on all sides by L.A.), Beverly Park, HolmbyHills, and Bel Airrarely go. Some, without shame, even proudly claim to

have never been there. Downtown is where Los Angeles was founded. Its

the home of the citys government, of the Los Angeles Times,and of cultural

institutions (the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion,

the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA) that are the equivalent of New Yorks

Lincoln Center. Though it is only 11.5 miles from the eastern edge of Bev-

erly Hills, twenty to forty-five minutes away (depending on the time of day

and traffic), downtown L.A. strikes many as another country, so far awayfrom the people most likely to appreciate its pleasuresand in many cases,


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Cast of Characters } xxii i

Also to the east and southeast are the poorest neighborhoods of Los An-

geles, like South Central, which burned in the infamous rioting in the 1990s,

and the homes of the Westsides maids and gardeners, many of them CentralAmerican, who sometimes travel hours each way by bus to turn grand neigh-

borhoods like Bel Air into Spanish-speaking villages during daylight hours.

Their march into and out of the districts wealthy canyons each day is a visual

signature of life on the west side of town.

Northeast of downtown Los Angeles are its old-money bedroom commu-

nities of Pasadena and tiny, exclusive San Marino; their architecture greatly

influenced that of Beverly Hills. Scattered around downtown like brilliant

stones on a broken necklace are other former enclaves of wealth, includingparts of Hollywood, Windsor Square, Hancock Park, and Los Feliz, as well as

hip Silver Lake, home of architectural gems by the modernist master Richard

Neutra.

West of the neighborhoods that are the focus of this book, Los Angeles

dead-ends at the Pacific Ocean, which is vaster by far than its East Coast

counterpart and a tropical aqua rather than the North Atlantics slate gray.

Some of the oceanfront neighborhoods are posh, like Malibu; others funky,

like Venice; and some are a mash-up of both, like Santa Monica; but all are

desirable for their proximity to the beach, sunsets that blaze redder because

of the smog, and their distance from downtown.

As the communities that concern us here were forming, planners envi-

sioned a road called Beverly Boulevard running east to west through the Los

Angeles basin, parallel to Mulholland Drive. Beverly Boulevard was merged

with Sunset Boulevard in 1933. The aptly named Sunset wends its way across

twenty-four miles of this twenty-nine-mile-wide metropolis, a curlicue, notan arrow, running east to west, as well as the dividing line between the hills

that define the north side of Los Angeles and the flats that mark the south.

Its most famous blocks, comprising the Sunset Strip, are in West Hollywood

(also its own city since 1984), between Beverly Hills and Hollywood, which

was annexed by Los Angeles in 1910. Rising above Sunset, in both Eastside

and Westside neighborhoods, are the steep, fire-prone canyons that reach

their apex along Mulholland Drive before tumbling into the San Fernando

Valley to the north.Mulholland, a scenic highway at the crest of the Santa Monica Moun-


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xxiv { Cast of Characters

and south through Benedict, Coldwater, Franklin, Sepulveda, and Higgins

Canyonsroughly parallel slashes through the mountains, connecting the

basin with the San Fernando Valley on the other side. At the time, the Ca-huenga Pass, site of todays Hollywood Freeway, was the only route of conse-

quence connecting the valley to downtown Los Angeles. In 1929, it was said

to carry a million cars a month, making the need for alternative routes acute.

The canyons now named Coldwater (originally Caada de las Aguas

Frias, or Canyon of the Cold Waters) and Benedict (originally Caada de

las Encinas, or Canyon of the Live Oakslater renamed for its first resi-

dent, Edson Benedict) got twisty, turny eponymous roads; Franklin Canyon

a foreshortened Beverly Drive that never made it to the valley; and SepulvedaCanyon got both a boulevard and the San Diego Freeway, also known as

Interstate 405.

South of Sunset, the city flattens and gradually morphs from the man-

sions of Beverly Hills to a mix of industry and residences in places like Culver

City (home of the famous MGM Studios, now the Sony Pictures film and

television complex) and finally to the asphalt sprawl of the airport, Los Ange-

les International, better known as LAX. Landing there on a clear day, one can

easily spot the primary features of the Los Angeles Basin: ocean to the west,

mountains to the north, downtown to the east, and just north of the ebony

towers of Century City (on the former Twentieth Century Fox studio lot),

the subjects of this book, the urban oases of Beverly Hills, Holmby Hills, Bel

Air, and Beverly Parkall nestled in the foothills, as the early advertising

brochures put it, between the city and the sea.


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Introduct ion

On Summit Ridge, Above Beverly ParkNovember 2009

The greatest frustration in researching this book was the difficulty I had

seeing the estates I was writing about, all of which are hidden behind gates,

fences, and foliage and visible, if at all, only in glimpses. Most homeowners

are understandably disinclined to open those gates even under the best of

circumstances. I took a commercial tour of the star homes at one point; was

given a second, far more accurate tour by a real estate broker; and repeatedly

drove through the communities Id decided to write about. I was even in-

vited into a few of the breathtaking houses described in the pages that follow.

Beverly Park was the hardest nut to crack because, unlike Beverly Hills,

Bel Air, and Holmby Hills, it is whats called a guard-gated neighborhood.

You cant even drive through it without being invited in by a resident. So one

day, I tried to drive around it, looking for a place where I could see this com-

munity that was conceived as a modern update of its neighbors, an updateconsisting of those fences and gates that keep the curious like me at a safe

distance. Like its older siblings, Beverly Park, built beginning in 1985, has a

hidden history. Unlike them, it is also almost entirely hidden itself.

Seeking a vantage point, I drove up what was once called Higgins Can-

yon on Beverly Drive, but that road ended abruptly. I doubled back and tried

Franklin Canyon. Turning west on Mulholland Drive, I found the north

gate of Beverly Park, but was turned away by a guard. A block further west,

I turned south on Summit Ridge Drive and eventually came to an intersec-tion with a sign directing cars to the other two guarded gates of Beverly Park.


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2 { U N R E A L E S T A T E

Certain I would only be spurned again and identify myself as a nuisance

in the process, I pulled off the road between the two gates and parked on a

ridge where, just beyond a low fence, the roofs of the mansions of BeverlyPark were all visible in a canyon bowl just below. Finally, I was able to get a

glimpse of this protected enclave and see its sprawling homes for myself. I

was, frankly, astonished; from above, the large houses all crowded together

looked like a suburb, albeit one pumped up on steroids.

Beverly Park is the youngest, most expensive, and arguably most exclu-

sive subdivision on the west side of Los Angeles. That region is so famous it

has multiple nicknames, most of them coined by realtors seeking to smear

cachet over as many communitiessome nice, some not soas possible.The broad residential zone between the crest of the Santa Monica Mountains

and Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood, and the Pacific Ocean in-

cludes Malibu and Santa Monica, Westwood, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades,

Beverly Crest, Bel Air, Holmby Hills, Beverly Hills, and Beverly Hills Post

Office, an L.A. neighborhood that has a snob-appeal Beverly Hills mailing

address even though its not actually in that city. Beverly Park is a neighbor-

hood within Beverly Hills Post Office.

Together, they are collectively the Westside. Its smaller, brighter nucleus,

the homogeneous and contiguous estate district made up of the last four of

those communities, has been dubbed the Platinum Triangle, though from

above, it looks more like a broccoli flower. But another nickname, initially

coined to capture greater L.A.s reputation for spaced-out flightiness, alleged

eccentricities, otherworldliness, frivolity, and lack of any ties to what most

people consider reality, especially in the realms of ambition and conspicuous

consumption, more precisely describes these, its richest and most prestigiousdistricts.

Welcome to La-La Land.

There are certain alluring neighborhoods around the world that are consid-

ered the best of the best nests, not just for locals but also for the worlds most

discerning homing pigeons. These are places that symbolize and consecrate

success when their names are uttered in answer to the question, Where do

you live? Londons Knightsbridge and Belgravia, Monte Carlo, the 7th ar-rondissement of Paris, the Gold Coast of Manhattan, Connecticuts Green-


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Introduction } 3

their fans and their charms. But the Triangle is in a class by itself, offering the

unique experience of country living within a world-class city and boasting

easy access (geographically speaking), high quality of life, spectacular beauty,extravagant architecture, a year-round temperate climate, and a world-class

concentration of glamour, fame, and fortune. The best homes in those com-

munities are what economists call positional goods, their value determined

in large part by their scarcity and how much others desire them.

Lets be clear: La-La Land is not Hollywood. The Hollywood community

is part of it, but La-La Land is more than, as the Beverly Hillbillies theme

song put it, swimmin pools and movie stars. La-La Land is a figurative ge-

ography as much as a real one; its a place of pregnant possibility and polaropposites, good and evil, American dreams and nightmares, sudden rises

and vertiginous falls. So it appeals equally to dreamers and schemers, all of

them gambling to survive on an L.A. mountaintop. That group certainly

includes directors, producers, actors, and even some writers. But movie and

TV people were latecomers to the Platinum Triangle. Initially unwelcome,

they have helped make its international reputation as a place with truly

great estates, but ironically, few celebrities can afford to live in the largest

of them anymore. And Hollywood stories are hardly the most interesting

ones in town. The Triangle is the world capital of unbridled fantasy and

ambitionsometimes base, but always compelling, whether centered on

power, sex, fame, fortune, or all of the above.

Location, location, location, the realtors say. Beverly Hills, Holmby

Hills, and Bel Air, the neighborhoods that latecomer Beverly Park apes and

aspires to join, were all conceived at the start of the twentieth century to be

the most exclusive, prestigious, luxurious, envy-inducing communities onearth. Great homes on large, flat pieces of land with sweeping views in these

three hillside neighborhoods soon became the West Coast equivalent of what

the author Tom Wolfe memorably characterized, in a bit of literary under-

statement, as the good apartment buildings of New Yorks Upper East Side.

What makes them so good is, largely, that you and I cant live in them and

probably never will. Not only that, we will probably never even visit unless

we work for a caterer, landscaper, or private security firm, or shell out for a

pricey benefit ticket. They are home to the fewest of the few, the self-selectedstars of democratic society, those who seek to act on the worlds great stages


19/24


Hills, a separate, independent city, the others parts of L.A.), comprise a

distinct psycho-geographic unit, irrespective of political boundaries. La-La

Land is as small as it is special, occupying a mere fifteen square miles, butits size belies its magnetic position in the worlds imagination. It is the focal

point of a kind of social, financial, and professional desire that exists no-

where else. For here, ambition in all its forms runs as hot and uncontrolled

as lust. The very visible reward for success is to live in the billionaires belt

around Sunset Boulevard.

The three original communities of the Triangle were all formed by real

estate developers between 1906 and 1923. At about 5.7 square miles, the

city of Beverly Hills is much larger than its estate district, which begins justsouth of Sunset and rises up to Mulholland Drive, bordered to the west by

Bel Air, to the east by Hollywood, and above it, by the Franklin Canyon Res-

ervoir, long the source of the Westsides drinking water. Bel Air, the largest

Triangle neighborhood, at about 6.4 square miles, is loosely bordered by the

Getty Museum and Sepulveda Boulevard on the west, Mulholland along the

north, Sunset Boulevard to the south, and Beverly Glen to the east. Holmby

Hills, shaped like a fist with its index finger pointing south down one side

of the Los Angeles Country Club, nestles between Beverly Hills and Bel Air.

At four hundred acres, it is comparatively tiny, yet its huge homes on large

lots straddling Sunset lead some to call it the most prestigious of the four

communities. Their young sibling, Beverly Park, is formally part of Beverly

Hills Post Office, which is in Los Angeles but shares the cherished 90210

zip code with Beverly Hills and so, in most minds, is part of the smaller city.

About the same size as Beverly Hills, B.H.P.O. sits in a notch mostly north

of Beverly Hills between the upper Hollywood Hills and the upper reachesof Bel Air.

Together, they areand always have beenmecca for the self-invented.

Though there is a landed gentry in California, much like the colonial

Society-with-a-capital-S of the East Coast, it no longer has the social power

or financial leverage to capture the popular imaginationthat resides in-

stead with the Triangles founding fathers, who were descendants of fur

trappers, Forty-niners, railroad builders, ranchers, and oilmen of the late

nineteenth century, and the descendants, both familial and professional, ofthe Jewish movie moguls of the early twentieth century. They all made this


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Introduction } 5

spent. Their contemporary equivalents are tech billionaires, rock musicians,

financial manipulators, and pyramid scheme operators.

Born out of the alchemical reaction of overlapping booms in oil, rail-roads, and land in the early twentieth century, the Triangle was conceived for

the Los Angeles elite, but it wasnt until the relative arrivistes of Hollywood

started buying land and building great estates in the 1920s that its fortunes

were assured and vast farms and ranches turned into luxury residences. The

Depression and World War II stopped that movement in its tracks, and for

years afterwards, the great homes of the area were relegated to white elephant

status. But in the 1970s, oil-rich Middle Easterners revived the market, and

the odd price correction notwithstanding, the areas luster as an enclave ofsupreme achievement has been unassailable ever since. Its now occupied by

parallel but separate and often opposing societiesquiet, ultraconservative

local wealth; some lingering Hollywood glamour and its consort, decadence;

and the latest iterations of fast money earned everywhere from cyberspace to

infotainment to the lower depths of the financial industries.

They may look askance at each other but they mix and mingle (even in

bedrooms); in many ways the apogeal product of their union was Ronald

Reagan, the movie star turned politician who emerged as a force in the Re-

publican Party, backed by ultraconservative wealth, and became a Bel Air

resident himself in 1989. Though Richard Nixon, another Southern Califor-

nian, also moved to La-La Land, and Jack Kennedy and Bill Clinton loved to

party there, it was Reagan who was the apotheosis of its will to power. The

kitchen cabinet who propelled Reagan to the White House were all Platinum

Triangle residents; a few owned trophy houses there. Today, you hear more

about its liberal cabal, but for a moment, Reagans pals ruled the world.The Triangle population is constantly refreshed by an endless stream of

fortune-seeking and -spending East Coasters and foreigners who have made

Los Angeles the worlds last frontier. For all of them, a home in the Triangle

is the ultimate fantasy of arrival. It is rarely acknowledged that, perversely,

they hope and believe money can buy the appearance of permanence in a

place defined by transience. In most cases, this arrival is followed by almost

inevitable departure. Unlike the landed gentry elsewhere, rare is the family

that holds on to a great estate across generations. Indeed, Triangle mansionsare so huge and cost so much to maintain that owners typically downsize,


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estate lineage of the homes in this book demonstrates the patterns of Triangle

ownership. Some examples:

On Sunset Boulevard, a mansion built in 1928 by a Spanish land-

grant family passes to the personal lawyer of Howard Hughes and

Louis B. Mayer and then to a guy who started out running a jani-

torial service and his wife, who ran a little ad agency. They are

now the billionaire owners of Teleflora, FIJI Water, POM, thirty

thousand acres of citrus groves, seventy thousand acres of pistachio

and almond orchards, and the Neptune Pacific shipping lineand

have bought three properties adjacent to theirs to create their ownSunset empire.

A Bel Air mansion built between 1935 and 1938 for a nurse wid-

owed by a rich older husband was then owned by Conrad Hilton,

the hotel chain founder (and grandfather of Paris Hilton). It then

passed to the owner of Dole Food, who made a staggering $58 mil-

lion profit when he sold it in 2000 to a former junk bond trader

whod walked away from a public telecom companys collapse with

hundreds of millions of dollars.

Greenacres, the mansion completed in 1929 by silent film star

Harold Lloyd in Benedict Canyon in Beverly Hills, has since been

owned by three Iranian businessmen; a record company mogul and

his socially ambitious wife; Ted Field, the much-married Marshall

Field heir who raced cars in the 1970s and ran Interscope Films

and Interscope Records in the late 1980s; and most recently, the

controversial supermarket billionaire, alleged model-hound, andformer Friend of Bill (Clinton), Ron Burkle.

In 1949, the Doheny family sold their ranch to a subdivider

and their adjacent mansion to a mob-connected businessman who

never lived thereit is now empty and owned by Beverly Hills

and moved to a slightly smaller mansion that they sold to the movie

producer Dino De Laurentiis, who sold it to the country singer

Kenny Rogers, who sold it to the Colorado wildcatter turned stu-

dio mogul Marvin Davis, whose widow sold it in 2005 to a guywho sells hardwarelotsof hardware. He tore it down to cement


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Introduction } 7

Owlwood, a huge Sunset Boulevard estate built in 1932, includes

a founder of Holmby Hills and his wifes mother, the developer

of the Bel-Air Hotel, a movie mogul and convicted tax cheat whoseduced Marilyn Monroe there, the crooner Rudy Valle, the actor

Tony Curtis and two of his five wives, pop stars Sonny & Cher and

rocker Gregg Allman, Jayne Mansfield, Engelbert Humperdinck,

an oilman, a carpet manufacturer, a staid insurance man, a Syrian

middleman for military contractors with a taste for hookers, a guy

who owned both dirty movie theaters and part of the Jimi Hendrix

estate, and a twenty-five-year-old known as the Boy King of Porn.

The last two each did time in federal prison. Its current owner isthe second wife and widow of one of the pioneers of subprime

mortgages.

More than a neighborhood, the Triangle is the seat of a certain set of as-

pirations, not all of them the same, but generally harmonious. It is a mirror

that both reflects and confirms self-image. But it is also a pleasure pit, and

as another of its nicknames, Lotusland, implies, can and has turned status

and image into a kind of opium, inspiring addictions just as dangerous and

all-consuming.

Just like New York, Paris, London, and Rome, the Triangle has a stratified

hierarchy. It is a Darwinian place where the pecking order is so brutal that

to stumble is often to die or, even if you live, to quickly disappear, if youre

smart, or else linger on as your life shrinks, first in the estimation of others,

then, unless you have superhuman strength of character, inevitably in your

own.Why inevitably? Because La-La Land is a make-or-break kind of place.

Only certain sorts want to be there and have the nerve, the skills, the resolve,

and the peculiar set of delusions to make their evanescent dream come true.

How brutal is it? Even movie stars have mostly left the area, leading some to

contend that they dont matter anymore since theyve effectively been priced

out of the molten center of the Triangles volcanic real estate market. All

that matters here is moneyor the ability to conjure its appearance out of

nothingness.Appearances may not be everything in the Triangle, but they count for


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even physically a fantasy; a place that would turn brown, wither, and die

were it not for piped-in water, roll-out insta-lawns, and gardeners who come

in every day from somewhere else to sustain its grand illusions. Though itwasnt invented for them, thats why Hollywood types found the Westside a

perfect place to settle. Nothing is indigenous in Los Angeles, a quality per-

fectly captured in the faux-historical pastiche that has come to be seen as the

architectural style of the Triangle. Everything and everyone here comes from

somewhere else. Impermanence defines the place. The book you are reading

is an attempt to give back to this magical kingdom some of the history it has,

perhaps willfully, forgotten.


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http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/isbn9780767932653http://books.google.com/ebooks?as_brr=5&q=9780767932653http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780767932653http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Unreal-Estate/Michael-Gross/e/9780767932653?isbsrc=Y&cm_mmc=Random%20House-_-RandomHouse.com%20Outbound%20Link-_-RandomHouse.com%20Outbound%20Link-_-RandomHouse.com%20Outbound%20Link,%20AFFILIATES-_-Linkshare-_-VD9*lkiWNd8-_-10:1http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/076793265X?ie=UTF8&tag=randohouseinc2-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=076793265X

unreal estate by michael gross - excerpt

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