The Greystone Estate

Since I am off to LA this week and time is of the essence, thought I'd reprint some excerpts from Veranda magazine of a past piece I wrote on the magnificent Greystone Estate. No doubt you will recognize the location and the true story of the history of the mansion is as fascinating and as mysterious as the mansion itself.


For the frequent filmgoer, it's an elegant house seen countless times on the big screen. Jack Nicholson made mischief in its grand living room in The Witches of Eastwick. Jude Law courted Cameron Diaz over a meal in the romantic comedy The Holiday - although they were supposedly in England. Even the house's bowling alley made an ominous appearance in There Will be Blood, starring Daniel Day-Lewis in an Oscar-winning performance as an oil tycoon in Southern California. (Other films included Death Becomes Her, The Bodyguard, An Indecent Proposal and What Women Want just to name a few).

Diaz and Cameron in The Holiday

Nicholson in The Witches of Eastwick

There Will Be Blood

The storied house in question is Greystone, the largest family estate ever built in Beverly Hills. Situated on a hill above famed Sunset Boulevard, the majestic yet mysterious manor was a gift from real-life oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny to his son and daughter-in-law, Edward "Ned" and Lucy Doheny, during the Roaring Twenties. Built on a 429-acre estate, the mansion became an imposing icon of wealth and power in California's early oil-rich days. "Of all the lavish gifts Edward Doheny gave his beloved son, the fifty-five room baronial castle was, by far, the most extraordinary, considered to be the most luxurious residence south of William Randolph Hearst's spectacular estate at San Simeon, California," says Margaret Leslie Davis in her Doheny biography, Dark Side of Fortune (University of California Press, 1998 and 2001).

You can read the rest of the story  here.

The mansion and grounds (shown here in 1928) are open to the public

Master Bedroom in 1945

One of the many Great Rooms used for film interiors

The Card Room boasts a scenic wall panel 

and black and white patterned marble floors

For more on the Greystone Mansion and Park, go here.

For more on Veranda's Designer Showhouse at Greystone, go here.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Friends of Greystone, Veranda, Columbia Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Courtesy of Katherine Timme Photo Collection

Camera Ready: It's Not Complicated

I was  privileged to be asked by F. Schumacher to moderate a panel for Westweek at the Pacific Design Center next week.

Camera Ready: It's Not Complicated will feature  Hollywood set decorators, interior designers and photographers who will discuss behind-the-scenes details on the process of designing and shooting interiors for print, film and television.

The panel includes talented set decorators Beth Rubino and David Smith along with interior designer James Radin and their work on director Nancy Meyers's design rich films  such as Something's Gotta Give, The Holiday and It's Complicated. Television host and interior design expert Brian Patrick Flynn will talk about his makeover secrets from the hit TBS series Movie and a Makeover and Hollywood photographer Ken Haber will share his tricks for recording sets to memory.

It's Complicated

The Holiday

Something's Gotta Give

Ken Haber's photography on Shopgirl

For more on the events at Westweek 2010: Design Revolution, go here. I will give a full report on the event soon so stay tuned!

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Universal Pictures,  Columbia Pictures and Ken Haber/Shopgirl, David Smith/The Holiday, Cindy Carr/Living Room/The Holiday.

Holiday Movies

I have talked with many film historians and "cinephiles" who think the only good movies are those made before the sixties and in black and white. While I don't necessarily agree (after all, there is The Godfather), I do think this is the case for the holiday themed films. Maybe it's nostalgia, better sets and scripts or the fact older films are less commercial and product placement oriented, but the following holiday films are always the perennial favorites for me. (And yes, I left off It's a Wonderful Life and Christmas Story -- for some reason I have never warmed up to those films. Let the comments begin....).

Holiday Inn (1942)

The definitive holiday movie (it even covers Lincoln's birthday and Valentine's Day) complete with Irving Berlin tunes, an idyllic Connecticut setting, Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas" and of course, Fred Astaire and the dance numbers. Crosby flees Manhattan to open up a supper club only open on the holidays (hence the name) and vies with his old musical partner Fred Astaire over the affections of a flower girl turned performer, Marjorie Reynolds. The set was reused by Paramount twelve years later for the film White Christmas and supposedly the hotel chain Holiday Inn took its name from the film in l952. A must see.

The cast of Holiday Inn

Valentine's Day sequence with Marjorie Reynolds and Bing Crosby

One of three films that used the song "White Christmas"

Legend has it Astaire took a shot or two of bourbon for each take of the film's "drunk dance"

White Christmas (1954)

Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye play a successful song and dance duo after World War II who help their commanding general save a failing Vermont Inn and become involved with a sister act along the way. The Vermont Inn is the remodeled Connecticut Inn from Holiday Inn and was to have originally featured Astaire in the Danny Kaye role (who filled in at the last minute for Donald O'Connor).

Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby is full feather regalia

Crosby, Kaye and songstress Rosemary Clooney

Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

Barbara Stanwyck plays foodie journalist Elizabeth Lane who in actuality, cannot boil an egg. She writes a "Smart Housekeeping" column about her domestic life on a Connecticut farm which is of course all fiction. I won't spoil the rest of the story but it does involve romance and of course, the Christmas holiday in Connecticut. The Connecticut home was the same set used for the film the Katherine Hepburn-Cary Grant film Bringing Up Baby (1938). There was also a television remake with Dyan Cannon and Kris Kristofferson and directed by none other than Arnold Schwarzeneggar in 1992!

Stanwyck with love interest Dennis Morgan in Christmas in Connecticut

Connecticut "house" on the Warner Brothers lot

Miracle on 34th Street (1947)

Miracle is the classic tale of the "real" Kris Kringle proving he is Santa Claus to a disbelieving special events director at Macy's and her six year old daughter played by Natalie Wood. And here's another piece of trivia, actor Edmund Gwenn who played Kringle was also Santa Claus in the 1946 Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Forever duplicated but none is better than the original.

Natalie Wood with Edmund Gwenn

And if you want to watch something more current on AMC this month there is always....

National Lampoon's Christmas (1989)

While it's not cinema verite', it is hands down one of the funniest holiday films ever made. Chevy Chase as the head of the Griswold family is priceless in his quest for the perfect Christmas -- complete with white trash in laws and a house lit up like Las Vegas (and doesn't every neighborhood have one?) The "squirrel" scene is worth the price of rental alone. And for those who really pay attention to these things, the Griswold house is the same one as the Murtagh house in the Lethal Weapon series on the Warner Brothers backlot.

The Griswold family

and my other personal favorite....

The Holiday (2006):

Two women (Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet) exchange houses during the holidays and love ensues. Jude Law, snappy script, fabulous sets...what's not to love? And thankfully on TBS all month. (See my earlier posts on the design of the film).

Try and have a happy stress free and sane holiday.... January is only three weeks away.

Photo Credits: Paramount Pictures, Warner Brothers, Columbia Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox.

The Designing Director

One of my favorite writer/directors in Hollywood is Nancy Meyers who gave us the romantic comedies What Women Want, The Holiday and Something's Gotta Give.

Her female characters are smart yet vulnerable, funny yet quirky and always classically chic. A Meyers film will almost certainly have a powerful woman, a love triangle and to-die-for interiors.

Besides being a master with the pen and the camera lens, she is a devoted design devotee as well. Her imprint is seen in every painting, club chair and window treatment from the Los Angeles bungalow of character Amanda Woods (Cameron Diaz) in The Holiday to Erica Barry's (Diane Keaton) Hamptons beach house from SGG. Both films were huge hits with the design community (and the general public), both widely envied and ultimately copied.

Many of SGG's furnishings came from Clarence House, Lee Jofa, Mimi London and Rug Loft. Laura Holland, Director of Marketing Services for Hickory Chair, noted Erica's Chelsea Bed from their Thomas O'Brien Collection was very popular with their customers (the film's designers requested the nail head trim be left off). Incidentally, the Chelsea Bed gets another fifteen minutes of fame as designer Michael Smith has ordered it for none other than the Obamas in the White House.

Inspired by designer Marcel Wolterinck's book, In/Ex (Antique Book Collectors Club, 2005, available on Amazon), the tailored contemporary interiors of The Holiday give new meaning to the terms sleek and serene.

Rooms in earth tones of gray, brown and green mixed with modern furnishings for a Spanish Colonial house in Brentwood (via soundstage) fit the bill as Meyer's wanted "Cameron's home to be classic and elegant and only slightly edgy and young."

Along with production designer Jon Hutman and set decorators Beth Rubino of SGG, Cindy Carr, Anna Pinock and David Martin Smith on The Holiday, Meyer's own interior designer James Radin of Los Angeles was a contributor to the design aesthetic as well. For more of his cinema style interiors, see the website www.jamesradin.com.

Meyers is hard at work in New York on her next romantic comedy with Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin vying for the attentions of Meryl Streep. Not to divulge any plot lines but I hear there is an architect/character involved -- no doubt there will be a strong design element as well. The film premieres Christmas Day and I can hardly wait.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of Columbia Pictures, Courtesy of Hickory Chair and The Holiday/David Smith

Many thanks to Jayne Chase for plugging Cinema Style on her radio show A Fashionable Life.

Be sure to check out her fashionable website too!