The Old Hollywood, Up for Bids

In Hollywood, sometimes an Italian rococo-style coffee table isn’t just an Italian rococo-style coffee table. Sometimes it’s a talisman, a sacred object with the power to confer a touch of old studio glamour, secondhand sex appeal or glitz-by-association on its heirs. Who knows? Maybe Clark Gable once set his champagne flute on that polished mahogany surface. Or perhaps Judy Garland, freshly divorced from her husband and strung out on diet pills, brushed it while making a beeline for Mickey Rooney at some Oscar-night soiree.

Such whimsical conjecturing may be hard to resist this morning at Butterfields auction house on Sunset Boulevard, when the onetime contents of a rambling Benedict Canyon estate will go on the block. Judging by items in the collection--including an 8-foot-long scale model of Ulm Cathedral expected to fetch up to $8,000--the previous owners, the late George and Merian Stoll, definitely had a taste for the stuff of which Hollywood legends are made.

George Stoll’s own legend was cast in metal and gold paint on the night of March 15, 1945, when he won an Academy Award statue for scoring the MGM musical comedy “Anchors Aweigh.” (The little gold man can be yours for a cool $10,000 to $20,000.) Starring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra as sailors on shore leave in the City of Angels, the movie was made when Stoll--”Georgie” to friends--was near the peak of his powers as one of MGM’s leading musical directors and composers. “Meet Me in St. Louis,” “The Wizard of Oz” and the Elvis Presley auto romp “Viva Las Vegas” were among the soundtracks he helped fashion. And though today his name would probably elicit puzzled stares from most people under 60, Stoll’s 80 film score credits and multiple Oscar nominations should give pause to all the Lexus-revving hotshots on the Sunset Strip.

Stoll died in 1985. His wife, a former actress who became a recluse after her husband’s death, passed away earlier this year at the Pebble Beach house that was the couple’s final home. The Stolls had no children but bequeath a legacy in the popular culture they made, as well as in the silver tea sets, beaded bags, Russian icons and fin-de-siecle Indian carpets that will be bid on today--more than 650 lots in all. The estate also included a 30-carat yellow French diamond, which will bring an estimated $150,000 to $250,000 at a separate Sept. 25 jewelry sale.

For the professionals at Butterfields, today’s auction will be business as usual, but with the added fizz that an old-school Hollywood pedigree always provides. On average, the auction house handles about four to five Hollywood estate sales a year.

“It’s a connection with the past. It’s an attempt to draw a line [between] where others have come from and where we have come from,” said Jeff Smith, a dapper middle-aged man who works in Butterfields’ department of furniture and decorative arts, as he surveyed a cocktail-hour, invitation-only viewing of the Stoll estate Thursday. “This may sound bad, but sometimes it’s easier to be romantic and love an object than another person.”

Estate auction previews are strange affairs, windows on individual lives that appeal both to cultivated eyes and inquiring minds. Wine, hors d’oeuvres, expert opinion and plain old gossip are the active ingredients at these events, and the sometimes over-the-top tastes of the dead aren’t necessarily granted more critical leeway than those of the living. Some professional auction mavens have sharp claws, which they brandish while pointing out, in stage whispers, a minor imperfection in a Chinese lacquered box or an especially garish Dresden figurine.

But there’s also a palpable feeling of pleasure that pervades any gathering of people with a shared obsession. The bargain-hunting faithful drifted from object to object in clumps of twos and threes, exclaiming while pausing to replenish their wine glasses or pluck hors d’oeuvres from a silver tray. A striking portrait of the silky-haired, gray-eyed Merian Stoll, nicknamed “Dallas” for her hometown, stared from a wall. “Ninety-five percent of portraits you see done from life are pretty miserable,” Smith said. “They’re what I call Sears, Roebuck portraits. These are actually very good.”

There’s a strong sense of playfulness in the dollhouses, vintage Lionel trains, porcelain tchotchkes and other objects that the couple apparently lavished on each other. “It’s that wonderful Hollywood thing about not quite growing up,” said Cameron Whiteman, Butterfields’ senior vice president of business development.

For several attendees, the piece de resistance was unquestionably Merian’s collection of 13 miniature period rooms. These exquisitely crafted replicas of pre-revolutionary French salons, bedrooms and libraries, built as if to host a troupe of performing mice, drew connoisseurs from across the West. “If I could have 10 of the 13 rooms, I could die happily for a few weeks,” said Ed McCarthy, a San Francisco antiques dealer and dollhouse collector as he gazed longingly at an octagonal Louis XVI boudoir constructed on a scale of 1 inch to 1 foot. But apart from an 18th century statue of the Virgin Mary with delicately sculpted hands, McCarthy pronounced the rest of the estate holdings to be “mediocre.” “If given the pieces, I would cherry-pick and maybe pick three,” he said. Others arrived with less exacting expectations. “We just enjoy it, and it gets us out of the house,” said screenwriter Doug Wallace, whose female companion asked not to be identified. “We drink a glass of free wine and spend $10,000.” Butterfields, at the base of the Hollywood Hills, is close to the couple’s home and those of many others in The Industry, Wallace went on. It’s a place where creative people can examine the aesthetic values of other creative people and find something that speaks to their own “spiritual needs,” he said.

Rodney Kemerer and Lindsay Doran seemed quite at home among the Stolls’ worldly possessions, with good cause. In 1992 the couple bought the Stolls’ Tudor Revival mansion, which had passed through several hands since the Stolls moved to Pebble Beach in the mid-’60s. Later, curious about the history of their home, they tracked down the hermitic Merian and, over time, developed a strong friendship. The couple said they’re considering buying some of the Stolls’ possessions and returning them to the home the Stolls nicknamed “The Castle.”

“What we uncovered was a great love story,” said Kemerer, who has taught film history and also restores historic houses. “They were an extremely close couple. They were married 43 years.”

“Which is like 200 in Hollywood years,” chimed in Doran, a former president of United Artists and now an independent producer whose credits include “Sense and Sensibility” and “Dead Again,” in which Kenneth Branagh plays an L.A. detective haunted by the spirit of a dead Hollywood musician.

Kemerer, too, seemed a bit haunted. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he pulled out an envelope of snapshots taken in Pebble Beach. There, unmistakably, was the woman in the portrait, a bit grayer but still, as Doran said, “stunningly beautiful.”

“I miss her, I really miss her,” Kemerer said. “This was their life, and now it’s over, and they didn’t have children, and it’s up for grabs.” Did any of these pieces have special associations for him? Had Merian recounted any good anecdotes connected to them? “Ask me on Tuesday,” Kemerer said with a laugh, indicating he didn’t want to tip off rival bidders.

Whatever the outcome of today’s bidding, the Thursday night crowd appeared ready to open their checkbooks. Mary Green, a Bay Area lingerie designer, characterized the Stolls’ taste as “very interesting, very eclectic.” Nibbling on a miniature black-bean pancake with mango salsa, she made a sweeping motion at the room’s cluttered contents.

“I mean, look at this clock,” Green said, gesturing at a massive timepiece. “It’s insane! That’s what makes it great.”