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Old Posted May 27, 2010, 5:08 PM
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sopas ej sopas ej is offline
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Location: South Pasadena, California
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Wow, all these great pics and anecdotes to go with them yet again!


Quote:
Originally Posted by GaylordWilshire View Post
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Pickfair, post-Phillips, pre-final Wallace Neff makeover.



While it might be another Corbett concrete design for the Robertses, I definitely don't think that the 21st St. house is the same one in the photo you posted--thank you for doing that, btw. I think the Robertses sold their Berkeley Square house early, as I said. I've found a good deal of information on all of the families, in periodicals, club records, various "who's who" types of books, even records of my own college fraternity, and there is a lot of conflicting detail, especially when it comes to addresses. C. Wesley Roberts was apparently the Wesley Roberts of a sizable and eponymous L. A. construction firm in the "oughts"--perhaps he commissioned the house from Corbett and then his son J. Wesley moved in, before moving on to 21st St. It would require alot of research using, for example, telephone books for every year of the lifespan of Berkeley Square to track all the occupants--this wouldn't really be that hard if one lived in L.A. and was even more obsessive than myself. But even then there would be conflicting information. One item that caught my eye in my pokings around was that attorney Lee Phillips of #4 (lots 28, 29, 30) was the original builder of Pickfair, eventually selling it to Doug and Mary. According to his great-granddaughter, it was not a hunting lodge, as is widely written. (So if Mr. Phillips lived on Berkeley Square and this wasn't a hunting lodge...what exactly was Mr. Phillips up to in the Hills of Beverly while the Mrs. had all her parties, including her annual doll auction for Children's Hospital?) Anyway, Doug and Mary remodeled the house several times, including at least once employing the great Wallace Neff, and it took the very talented and tasteful Miss Pia Zadora to destroy it. Thank you, Pia.
I remember reading that the press would jokingly refer to "Pickfair" as "Buss-fair" when L.A. Lakers owner Jerry Buss owned it. My understanding is that after Pia Zadora bought the property, it was largely demolished and it's basically a whole different house now.

A few days ago I was trying to look for good old photos of Taylor Yard or the "Cornfield" north of Chinatown, being that it was featured prominently in the 1942 film "This Gun For Hire." It's the only Veronica Lake movie I've seen, and as I recall, a rather dashing 29 year-old Alan Ladd is in it; he plays the bad guy (albeit a protagonist) but in my opinion he was too good-looking to play the bad guy. I think this is the movie that made him a star, having been a relative unknown before. Taylor Yard of course is now the L.A. State Historic Park; the Metro Gold Line runs alongside it, probably the only reminder that it used to have anything to do with trains.

I haven't been able to find any good pics of Taylor Yard, that I like, anyway... so I'll just use this picture of the principal cast members of "This Gun For Hire"...

L-R: Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, Robert Preston

doctormacro.com

...and this clip from the film. You don't see Taylor Yard until around the 6 minute mark. From there you can see Alan Ladd run across a pedestrian bridge over the train tracks. It was an old picture of the pedestrian bridge over the tracks that I wanted to find somewhere on the internet. If anyone rides the Metro Gold Line south into the Chinatown Station, the scenes from that part of the film should look familiar.
Video Link


Here's a view of the abandoned Taylor Yard from 2000:

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Last edited by sopas ej; May 27, 2010 at 6:57 PM.
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