20 Lavish Mansions Of Hollywood’s Golden Age Stars

In 1919, the publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst commissioned the construction of Hearst Castle, a private estate on the California coast, and hired Julia Morgan, California’s first woman to be licensed as an architect, to create the 115-room mansion, which includes an outdoor marble swimming pool, an indoor tiled pool, and a private airstrip. Hearst’s romantic partner, Marion Davies, an accomplished comedic actress in her own right, presided over lavish soirées for decades at the estate. In 1958, Hearst’s company gave the estate to California, and it remains open to the public today.

The silent-film actress Mary Pickford, also known as America’s Sweetheart, and her husband, the swashbuckling actor Douglas Fairbanks, bought the 18-acre property in 1919. Their estate became known as Pickfair, a combination of their surnames. It was originally a hunting lodge that builder Horatio Cogswell expanded before architect Wallace Neff turned it into a 42-room mansion that hosted royalty and world leaders. The mansion was demolished in 1990 by a subsequent owner who claimed the house had become infested with termites. All that remains of the main house today are its original gates and a surviving guest wing.

The 1950s sex symbol Jayne Mansfield used inherited funds to buy a large home in Los Angeles’ Holmby Hills. Along with her husband, ex-bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay, she painted the house pink, built a heart-shaped swimming pool that spelled out “I Love You Jaynie,” and furnished the interior with pink shag carpeting and a fountain that poured champagne. Most of the furnishings came from manufacturers, who provided them in exchange for exposure, for a total estimated value of $150,000. Developers later tore the mansion down.

Buster Keaton, the silent comedian known as The Great Stone Face, had architect Frank Meline design a 20-room Italian villa for him in Beverly Hills in 1926. Keaton rehearsed his physical comedy gags in the villa’s elaborate outdoor pools. A pricey divorce and the loss of his film studio contract meant that he lost the house in 1932. Years later, British actor James Mason bought the villa and discovered the nitrate prints of Keaton’s own now-forgotten movies in the projection vault.

In 1947, singer and actor Frank Sinatra asked E. Stewart Williams, an architect, for a Georgian mansion in Palm Springs. Instead, Williams talked him into something new, a glass-and-flagstone Mid-Century Modern home that became known as Twin Palms and helped define the look of the desert city for decades. To let guests know when it was time for a cocktail, Sinatra flew a Jack Daniel’s flag between two palm trees. And while the pool has a piano-shaped outline, often attributed to Sinatra, Williams says that it really only reflects an accident of the patio’s angles.

Rudolph Valentino, who starred in The Sheik, bought a Spanish Colonial house in Benedict Canyon in 1925 and ringed its four acres with a concrete wall to keep fans out. He named it Falcon Lair, after an unproduced film project. The seclusion was brief: Valentino died suddenly of an illness in 1926, at the age of 31. The estate was put up for sale to pay off his creditors, and eventually was owned for several decades by the tobacco heiress Doris Duke. Developers demolished the main residence in 2006.

The newly crowned king of Hollywood, Clark Gable, known for Gone with the Wind, and his wife, screwball comedy queen Carole Lombard, skipped a showcase mansion for a working Encino ranch complete with citrus groves and stables. Lombard allowed herself only one marble bathroom, keeping the rest of the ranch simple. Lombard was killed when her plane crashed while she was touring the country selling war bonds. Gable remained on the ranch until his own death many years later.

Bela Lugosi, the Hungarian-born star of the 1931 film Dracula, had been living in a Tudor Revival mansion in Beachwood Canyon for several years when he was at the peak of his fame. The stately abode, built between the late 1920s and early 1930s with stone fireplaces and high vaulted ceilings just below the Hollywoodland sign, was a perfect fit for the darkly glamorous actor. He shared it with his wife and his Great Danes during his days of financial stability.

In 1932, the studio head and animator Walt Disney hired architect Frank Crowhurst to design him a storybook French Normandy house in Los Feliz with stained-glass windows and hand-painted ceilings. He was able to hold movie screenings in his private theater to see how the animation rushes were coming along. Disney built a tiny cottage in his yard for his daughters. He lived in the house as he made Snow White, Pinocchio, and Fantasia. And his own house appeared ready-made for a movie.

In 1941, Errol Flynn, the Australian-born actor who starred as the title character in The Adventures of Robin Hood, constructed a Colonial-style farmhouse on almost 12 acres in the Hollywood Hills. The estate, known as Mulholland Farm, was reportedly outfitted with secret passageways and two-way mirrors, according to guest memoirs and party stories. However, no records of such work were found in Flynn’s building permits. He was forced to sell the estate in 1959 due to financial problems. Singer Ricky Nelson later owned the property, and it was eventually razed by developers in 1988.

Singer and actor Bing Crosby, famous for “White Christmas,” constructed a 20-room mansion with stables for his racehorses in Toluca Lake in 1936. On January 3, 1943, Crosby’s house went up in flames while he was away. It appears that a Christmas tree had been too dry and caught fire, burning the house down. His master recordings were lost, as well as his awards and memorabilia, and he once claimed that all he grabbed from the house was the money that he had stashed away in a shoe. After selling the lot and moving on, he never rebuilt the original house.

Harold Lloyd, the silent-era comedy star known for his daredevil stunts in Safety Last, constructed a massive Italian Renaissance-style mansion called Greenacres in Benedict Canyon in the late 1920s that included its own golf course and a canoe run through the estate’s property. Lloyd resided at the estate until he passed away in the early 1970s. Unlike many of Hollywood’s historic mansions, the primary residence endures today on five acres, although the rest of the estate’s acreage has since been parceled out into residential lots.

I Love Lucy star Lucille Ball bought a Colonial Revival home on Beverly Hills’ Roxbury Drive in 1954 with her husband and co-star, Desi Arnaz, and lived there during the height of the show’s popularity, with neighbors like Jack Benny and Jimmy Stewart nearby. Even after she divorced Arnaz in 1960, she stayed in the house for 35 years, handing out Halloween candy to the children in the neighborhood until her death in 1989.

Comedic film star Marion Davies, the longtime companion of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, purchased Beverly House, a Mediterranean Revival home on Beverly Hills’ North Beverly Drive, in 1946 so that Hearst, who was in declining health, could remain near Los Angeles physicians. The 29,000-square-foot house featured a hand-painted ceiling and an Olympic-size swimming pool. Hearst resided in the mansion until his death in 1951. Two years later, John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, celebrated their honeymoon in the same house.

In 1938, Judy Garland, cast as Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz at 16, and her mother hired architect Wallace Neff to build a white-brick house in Bel Air with dormer windows, a curved staircase, and a kidney-shaped pool. The New England storybook look was perfect for a girl who was about to become MGM’s biggest young star. Garland lived in the house throughout the early stages of her rise to fame, until 1943.

Comedy actress Marion Davies commissioned architect Julia Morgan to create a massive beachfront property in Santa Monica, including a Georgian-style mansion of 110 rooms and a marble swimming pool spanned by a Venetian bridge. Paid for by Davies’ lover, publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, the estate was famous for its costume parties in the 1930s. The main house was demolished years later by developers, though the pool and a smaller guest house remain, reopened to the public as a beach house years ago.

Charlie Chaplin, the silent screen legend best known for the Little Tramp, personally designed his 14-room home in Beverly Hills, which was built by his personal studio carpenters from 1922 to 1925. Used to the quick, temporary work of movie sets, they nicknamed the house “Breakaway House” for its quirks and speedy construction. The house, complete with a pipe organ and a tennis court that attracted many Hollywood artists, was where Chaplin resided until 1952, when he left the country for Switzerland amid a political scandal.

Oscar-winning Mildred Pierce star Joan Crawford purchased a 10-room Brentwood house in 1928 and remodeled it repeatedly through four marriages. The actress liked her house clean, as magazine features showed off white carpets, plastic furniture covers, and no dust. Crawford sold the house in 1957. Decades later, her daughter Christina’s memoir alleged abuse at the house, claims the other Crawford children have publicly disputed.

Humphrey Bogart, the Oscar-winning actor best known for Casablanca, and his wife, actress Lauren Bacall, purchased a French Colonial-style mansion in Holmby Hills in 1952. It would become home to many of their friends, such as Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland. After one night of having too much fun, Bacall called them “the Rat Pack.” It was years before Sinatra became known for that name. When Bogart died of cancer at the house in 1957, it marked the end of an era.

Jack L. Warner, the co-founder and chief of Warner Bros. Pictures, added to his nine-acre Beverly Hills property for more than a decade. He called on architect Roland Coate to design a Neo-Georgian mansion, interior designer William Haines to decorate it, and landscape architect Florence Yoch to landscape the grounds with everything from a private nine-hole golf course to tennis courts and even gasoline pumps. The property was the site of countless studio-era parties that continued for years after Warner moved into the residence. He would live in the home until his death in 1978.

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