The room, like most of the others, displayed a number of fine antiques, including a George Ill-style mahogany library table and a George III writing desk. On the first floor, the living room boasted eighteenth-century English paneling, corner niches for the display of Wedgwood china and other objects, and a George Ill-style cutglass chandelier. He also helped popularize the Neoclassical style in Los Angeles homes during the thirties.Īt the Warner mansion, the front door opened into a two-story entrance hall, notable for its extraordinary parquetry floors with patterns executed in a variety of woods and a sweeping cantilevered staircase that led to the upstairs bedrooms. Haines counted some of the thirties and forties Hollywood legends among his clients, including Joan Crawford and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Carole Lombard, Norma Shearer and director George Cukor. In keeping with the Warner mansion's elegantly restrained façade, matinee-idol-turned-designer-to-the-stars William Haines decorated the rooms in a Georgian style, frequently adding his own whimsical touches. Selznick's nearby house, he had begun in the thirties to work more and more in flamboyant Beverly Hills. Coate was well known in the conservative San Marino and Pasadena social circles during the twenties, but after designing producer David O. Coate, who enlarged and rebuilt the mansion in the Georgian style with an impressive Greek Revival portico. Warner consequently enlisted architect Roland E. The existing Spanish-style mansion, which had been the height of architectural chic in the mid-twenties, looked outdated by the mid-thirties, and it reminded the brash studio head of his failed first marriage. Those beautiful women, looking marvelous in this wonderful setting.” Dolores Del Rio in a white satin gown that contrasted her dark hair and dark eyes. All those beautiful women dressed in wonderful elegance.
Just the four of us having our first drink of the evening. Errol Flynn was behind the bar, Howard Hughes was my date, and Jimmy Stewart was seated on a stool. “I remember one New Year's Eve party in 1939 or 1940,” Olivia de Havelland has recalled. With its 13,600-square-foot Georgian-style mansion, expansive terraces and gardens, two guesthouses, nursery and three hothouses, tennis court, swimming pool, nine-hole golf course and motor court complete with its own service garage and gas pumps, the nine-acre property was- and still is-the archetypal studio mogul's estate.įew homes, moreover, compared with the Warner estate as a social milieu in the thirties and forties. Only a handful of Beverly Hills houses have ever rivaled the Warner estate. This article originally appeared in the April 1992 issue of Architectural Digest.