Off the star map’s path, back in time

Fans of old Hollywood and old houses get twin delights in this book, which chronicles some of the great residential architecture of early 20th century Los Angeles -- including Streamline Moderne and Beaux Arts -- along with lore about those who built and lived in the houses, and those who have recently restored them.

From walled enclaves at Santa Monica beach to Whitley Heights and Laughlin Park, Wallace traverses the city to show the magnificent and relatively unsung lairs of luminaries such as Ariel and Will Durant, W.C. Fields, Wallace Beery, Carole Lombard, Cecil B. DeMille, and that once-controversial couple, actors Cary Grant and Randolph Scott.

The photos by Juergen Nogai give a sense of what it might be like to live in the beautifully restored homes, and Wallace’s text delivers substantial information along with juicy, often tongue-in-cheek tidbits that make the houses memorable both for their design and their inhabitants and the sometimes delusional history that accompanies them.

The home often called Carole Lombard’s house, for example, may not have actually been lived in by the actress, Wallace explains in his chapter on the “spectacular” 1927 Streamline Moderne house on a walled hill in Laughlin Park. Nonetheless, he covers the architecture, the superb interiors, Lombard’s brief, tragic life, and the home’s recent restoration. He ends with a quote from a recent visitor, dazzled by the splendor: “If Carole Lombard didn’t live here, she should have.”

The Grant-Scott house, “a delightful understated exercise in Spanish Colonial Revival architecture,” sits on West Live Oak Drive near Griffith Park. Wallace says it became home for the reputedly romantically involved actors until Grant married first wife Virginia Cherrill and carried her over its threshold, where Scott (still in residence) awaited them.

Some homes shown are small and charming and qualify simply because they exude the glamour of that Hollywood heyday. But the ones where so much of Hollywood’s history took place make the book a good read for outsiders who’d like to look in.

--Bettijane Levine