In that place, poker was played until the wee hours of the morning, in million-dollar timbas washed down in bourbon or French champagne in which the host, , and guests such as Dean Martin, Angie Dickinson, Sammy Davis Jr. or Joey Bishop participated. Lucille Ball and the rich New York heiress Dora Hutchinson bathed together in her pool. Paul McCartney and Miley Cyrus sang and played guitar in their gardens. scenes of Mad Men, Haunted, Californication, Savages o Dreamgirls They were filmed in their luxurious rooms. . He also appears in video clips of leading figures in the music business such as Rihanna, Beyoncé, Usher and Mariah Carey.
Furthermore, in the guest house of the Los Angeles mansion known as Farralone they met to have sexual relations, according to various testimonies that are not completely verified, before and after the Hollywood star sang to the Democratic president.
It is confirmed that Sinatra resided there intermittently between 1954 and 1963. In this corner of the San Fernando Valley, in the wealthy neighborhood of Chatsworth, at the foot of the Santa Susana mountain range, the singer found refuge in the days when who and had brief romances with Lauren Bacall and the British dancer and actress Juliet Prowse.
The mystique had a price
These days, Farralone is in the news because he is back for sale. This time, at a price higher than 8 million dollars but lower than the 9 that it cost last year or the more than 21 million that were asked for it in 2021. Its current owners claim to have obtained a return of more than 750,000 dollars renting it for filming of movies and series, but they have not been able to prevent it from continuing to devalue.
Even, in a commercial maneuver that is difficult to understand, they have decided to change its name: it is now called Byrdview, although the press continues to refer to it by that contraction of Far (far) and Alone (solo) that made it famous. Indeed, the mansion was a perfect place to enjoy solitude just half an hour from the center of Los Angeles: with barely 35,000 inhabitants in a very large area, Chatsworth is one of the peripheral neighborhoods with the lowest population density in the metropolitan area, and Farralone is at the top of a hill with restricted and discreet access.
They make you think that the palace may be worth what it costs. For starters, the estate occupies an area of around four acres (more than 15,000 square meters) in the heart of the Chatsworth Nature Reserve, with splendid views of the San Fernando Valley, the Los Angeles foothills and the surrounding mountains. It has gardens, terraces, viewpoints and an outdoor pool.
The mansion, in the shade of ancient trees, is a building with a neat futuristic aesthetic with more than 600 square meters of living space, four bedrooms, seven bathrooms and movable glass walls. He designed it in 1941, author of such emblematic constructions as the Transamerica pyramid in San Francisco, the Theme Building at the Los Angeles International Airport, the Geisel bookstore in San Diego, the Pepperdine University campus in Malibu or the Disneyland hotel in Anaheim.
This was the future in 1941
Pereira was a peculiar man. A fan of science fiction and motor racing, he defended a type of spectacular and accessible modernity, very cinematic, heir to the art deco, indebted both to him Metropolis dand Fritz Lang as with the work of John Carter or Edgard Rice Burroughs.
Although he grew up in Chicago and his early works can be traced to various locations in the American Midwest, he settled in Los Angeles with his brother Hal, also an architect, in the 1930s and developed the bulk of his career in California. Hired by a real estate fund owned by major studios, he became Hollywood’s unofficial architect. So much so that they even offered him the opportunity to serve as art director on film noir classics such as The crow (1942), Alan Ladd’s first film, or war cinema, like since you left (1944). Con Pirates of the Caribbean Sea won an Oscar for best special effects.
In the construction of Farralone, Pereira was assisted by. The mansion was commissioned by Dora Hutchinson, heiress to the Chase Bank fortune in Manhattan. In the months leading up to the United States’ entry into World War II, Hutchinson had grown fed up with what he felt was decadent and provincial New York high society and was looking for places in the Los Angeles area to throw big parties with his new friends from the Hollywood elite.
Its Fourth of July celebrations, with displays of pyrotechnics hardly unprecedented in the area, became legendary and attracted the attention of illustrious figures such as Ava Gardner and Judy Garland. Garland (who at that time was still called Fox) on June 15, 1945, in a ceremony attended by the management of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and which gave rise to one of the most torturous marriages in classic Hollywood, weighed down by infidelities and drug use.
From Lucille to Marilyn via Frank
Years later, , who was then going through a marital crisis with her husband and co-star in I Love Lucy, the Cuban Desi Arnaz. In 1954, Hutchinson got tired of stuffing himself with margaritas by the pool and decided to return to New York, after his still-wife, Ava Gardner, moved to Madrid. Thus ended three years of legendary marital quarrels crowned by the occasional clandestine romance and an overdose of barbiturates.
Sinatra celebrated his return to bachelorhood by turning Farralone into the official headquarters of , kermeses alcoholic parties in which real fortunes changed hands in the blink of an eye and which usually ended with baths in the pool at dawn. The exchange of cards at the Chatsworth mansion between Frank and Dean Martin would end up consolidating their passion for gambling: in 1960 they would together buy Cal-Neva, a casino-hotel on the shores of Lake Tahoe, the scene in later years of the mythical orgies of the Kennedy brothers, Jack and Bob.
By then, Sinatra had already welcomed Marilyn as Farralone’s regular guest. So much so that the actress ended up renting the guest house to her. There, in theory, the never confirmed meetings between Marilyn and Kennedy took place. Monroe was then working on what would end up being her last film, the incomplete Someone has to give in (Something’s Got to Give)by George Cukor, and had serious problems with alcohol and amphetamine consumption.
One of the actress’s biographers, Jason Spada, states that Marilyn and JFK had known each other since 1954, but the definitive rapprochement between the two occurred in 1962, at the request of Sinatra, more than accustomed at that point to acting as a pimp for his illustrious and incontinent friend. The paradox of this story is that the first time the lovers spent the night together was not in Farralone, but in the mansion that another singer, Bing Crosby, a Republican party sympathizer, had in Palm Springs.
Sinatra had offered to host Kennedy on his official trip to Los Angeles as he had done on his frequent private visits. He had even made renovations to his residence to accommodate the presidential escort. But the FBI recommended the leader not to be seen in public with Sinatra. Hence, Crosby ended up being the president’s official host and Kennedy, if his meetings with Marilyn at the mansion on the hill were true, only went to Farralone incognito.
Marilyn died under mysterious circumstances on August 4, 1962, shortly after their (alleged) spring of love at the boarding house. Kennedy was killed in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Shortly after, Sinatra got rid of a mansion that perhaps brought back bad memories.
Over the past sixty years, Farralone has continued to have posh tenants and visitors who have contributed to its mystique. Paul McCartney attended one of the parties organized on the property and ended up holding an acoustic guitar to give an impromptu concert. Miley Cyrus chose the gardens of the Pereira estate as the setting for And Beyoncé, apparently, asked for a price for the property, but couldn’t decide to buy it.
The question is why a place with such a history is now selling for a third of what was asked for it in the middle of the pandemic. In any case, as in Sinatra’s poker games, those interested in winning the hand must be willing to put a lot of money on the table.
