Razor King Made Calabasas His Home

Near the turn of the century, an eccentric young bottle-cap salesman from Fond du Lac, Wis., with the unlikely name of King Camp Gillette, was looking for a sure-fire product that would make him a fortune.

Gillette’s boss advised him to invent something that people would use once and then throw away--just like the bottle caps Gillette was selling.

After some research, Gillette came up with the idea of the safety razor and the disposable blade in 1895. When his razor business first opened in Boston in 1903, Gillette managed to sell only 51 razors and 168 disposable blades. But by the next year, sales had jumped to 90,000 razors and 12 million blades, effectively changing the shaving habits of a nation.

Today, the Gillette Corp. claims it controls two-thirds of the world’s blade and razor market as well as having a controlling interest in Braun, the German electric razor company.

Gillette moved to Southern California in 1916 to start the western branch of his razor empire. He and his family lived in mansions in Santa Monica, Newport Beach and Beverly Hills, before buying a 216-acre ranch in the Santa Monica Mountains and building a 25-room mansion and lagoon at what is now 26800 W. Mulholland Highway in Calabasas.

Gillette lived there for the rest of his life, becoming a philanthropist and fighting off the occasional lawsuit. A man of unusual beliefs, Gillette thought that competition was evil and dreamed of a utopia in which 60 million people would live in glass-domed complexes overlooking Niagara Falls.

Gillette died at his Calabasas home in July 1932 at the age of 77. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film producer Clarence Brown owned the place from 1935 to 1952, and reportedly used it as a backdrop for scenes in “Gone With the Wind” and “National Velvet.”

After serving as a seminary and college for many years, the mansion and surrounding land were purchased in 1986 by Soka University.