Elegant Setting Put to Good Use
Like her neighbors in the luxury community of Belcourt in Newport Beach--where even a condo can go for $1 million--Susan Brayton has a passion for privacy.
Here, not far from Fashion Island, multimillion-dollar homes sit on pristine streets where the stop signs are framed in white, like pastel paintings.
And here--in the shadowy Bel-Air-type neighborhood that was home to the late Athalie Clarke (mother of heiress Joan Irvine Smith)--towering black iron gates bar the uninvited.
“I use the house mainly for family,” says Brayton, a mother of two young sons who dabbles in interior design and the oil business. “I am a partner in an oil field with George Brayton,” she says with a gracious smile. “It’s not pumping as much as we’d like, but it’s pumping.”
Yes, she has occasional parties here for nears and dears. One doesn’t have a 5,000-square-foot manse with pool, gazebo, tennis court, gourmet kitchen and gold-leafed commodes not to have parties.
But the reception she staged last week for the underwriters of the annual Newport Beach Concours d’Elegance (set for Oct. 2 at Pelican Hill Golf Club) marked the first time in her 10 years at Belcourt that she opened her doors to charity.
All it took was a look in the lobby of the Assessment and Treatment Services Center in Santa Ana--the beneficiary of the annual Concours--to persuade her to help.
“When I went into the lobby of ATSC and saw all of those children with mothers and no fathers. . .” she begins, choking up. She swallows hard. “Let’s just say I’m very pro women and kids.”
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With the motto, ‘Arrest the problem, not the child,’ ATSC uses free professional family counseling to keep at-risk children out of the juvenile justice system.
Party guests including mega-philanthropists Charles and Nora Hester (who also hole up in Belcourt) nibbled on jumbo shrimp and sipped something cool while they ambled through Brayton’s lavish environment.
Decorated in the style of “The Phantom of the Opera” meets “Sunset Boulevard,” the home is drenched with gilt, sconces, chandeliers, mirrors, marbleized surfaces, fine rugs, enormous oil paintings, glamour-fabrics and art objects. A master bedroom desk is glazed with fine silver. A gilded Egyptian chair used in Cecil B. DeMille’s “Cleopatra” accents another area. A guest-bath cabinet is paved with glittering crystals.
“I would love to live in Europe,” Brayton says of the lush, Old World ambience she has created for herself. “My first choice would be Sorrento on the Amalfi Coast. But the fact is, the best place to educate your children is right here in America.”
So, here she will stay until her sons are grown. “I can’t get to Europe, so I’m going to have it here. I wanted the interior to give you the sense of being somewhere other than Newport Beach.
“We don’t have great architecture here, and we don’t have anything old--that’s why I took the house somewhere in time.”
With all of the money she has invested in her property (“probably $1 million in furnishings alone,” she says) why doesn’t she live on the water? Isn’t that the Newport Beach address?
“I’ve lived on the water,” she says. “But for parties, this is better. On the water, your food gets cold by the time you sit down and you’re out there freezing with sweaters on. And here, your lots are larger.”
Brayton gets a kick out of telling guests that her home has been seen by 30 million Japanese. “Last year, Asahi Television in Japan was looking for a female, self-motivator type to feature on one of their shows,” Brayton says. “They heard about me and my house, and after they saw the place, brought a director and film crew here from Japan. They used the segment to help motivate the Japanese audience, show them how Americans are.”
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Also among guests were Concours co-chairwomen Candace Rice and Donna Schroeder. The two women helped greet guests in front of the house, where vintage automobiles of the type that will be featured at the Concours were on display.
“We expect over 70,000 people at the gate,” says Rice. Proceeds are expected to be in the area of $80,000. “In California, our concours is second only to the one at Pebble Beach and we’ve been at this for 12 years. Pebble Beach has done it for 40 years.”
Says Schroeder: “The unique thing about our committee is that we have all been working together for 12 years on this project.”
Rice smiles. “Yep, we’re like ‘The Firm.’ You leave, you’re dead!”
