Introduction
Although we have covered celebrity-lined streets of Old Hollywood including Roxbury Drive and Rodeo Drive in previous articles, there are many other streets in Beverly Hills and its surrounding areas that were also home to many stars over the years. In this new series, we will explore the streets that these Hollywood legends called home over the years. This particular installment features the homes of Bedford Drive, Hillcrest Road, and San Ysidro Drive.
Bedford Drive
441 S. Bedford Drive
441 S. Bedford Drive was once the home of Nancy Sinatra, who lived here in the 1960s. Built in 1929, the 1,800-square-foot house contains three bedrooms and three bathrooms.
512 N. Bedford Drive
Jazz Age It girl Clara Bow called 512 N. Bedford Drive home. The house is nearly 2,900 square feet and contains four bedrooms and four bathrooms.
Built in 1925, Bow made it her own on October 27, 1926, for $15,000. Within the next few weeks, Bow began an affair with Gary Cooper, which took place inside the walls of this property. Bow lived here until 1931.
“Up one of the winding roads of Beverly Hills, tucked close to a yucca-covered hillside, sprawls a country home of Spanish type. You can see it a mile away, its tile roof of a red blotch, as daring as Clara’s own auburn curls. It is Clara’s place, you know. Exactly the place you would expect a flapper to live. The dazzle of it almost hurt my eyes.”
– Brighter Homes magazine (1928)
615 N. Bedford Drive
In 1935, after Barbara Stanwyck had divorced her husband vaudevillian Frank Fay, the actress moved to 615 N. Bedford Drive. This house was located down the street from her good friend and manager, Zeppo Marx, and his wife Marion.
Built on a third of an acre in 1927, this house contains six bedrooms and six bathrooms with a total square footage of 5,300.
616 N. Bedford Drive
Carmen Miranda lived in the original house that sat at 616 N. Bedford Drive. Sadly, the house was razed in 1989 and a new house was built on the lot a year later. Very little is known about the dimensions of the original house.
Miranda suffered a heart attack on August 5, 1955, and died immediately from the ailment. Earlier that day Miranda shot a television special with Jimmy Durante with the pair performing additionally for the studio audience after cameras stopped rolling. Afterward, she went home late in the evening.
“It was about 3 a.m. when the actress and her husband, Film Producer David Sebastian, climbed the stairs to bed. They occupied separate bedrooms.
Miss Miranda removed her clothing, placed her platform shoes in a corner, lit a cigarette and placed it in an ash tray and went into her bathroom to fix her face for the night.
She apparently came from the bathroom with a small, circular mirror in her hand and in the small hall that leads to her bedroom, she toppled to the floor and died.
She made no outcry. No one heard her fall. Her body was found at about 10:30 a.m. lying in the hallway.
“She was tired from the long hours of work the day before and the party,” her husband said. “I wanted her to sleep late. I went into her room to wake her — and found her lying there.”
– Los Angels Times, August 6, 1955
621 N. Bedford Drive
Singer and actress Jeanette MacDonald lived at 621 N. Bedford Drive. The house was built in 1923 and contains four bedrooms and three-and-a-half bathrooms along with its spacious 3,500 square feet.
718 N. Bedford Drive
718 N. Bedford Drive has four bedrooms and four bathrooms and has a total square footage of 3,200. Built in 1926 this Colonial house was the home of comedy legend Stan Laurel from 1928 until 1930.
721 N. Bedford Drive
Steve Martin bought 721 N. Bedford Drive on March 27, 1979. 20 years later he tore down the original house and built a new one on the land. The current house is 8,100 square feet and contains 5 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms.
722 N. Bedford Drive
Built in 1924 this 4,200 square foot property was the home of Adolphe Menjou. It contains six bedrooms and five bathrooms.
730 N. Bedford Drive
730 N. Bedford Drive was the home of both Lana Turner and Merv Griffin. It is also the location of the killing of Johnny Stompanato by Lana Turner’s daughter Cheryl Crane (Click Here to read our article about it).
The house was built in 1930 and contains six bedrooms and six bathrooms. It contains a total of 6,700 square feet.
904 N. Bedford Drive
904 N. Bedford Drive was built in 1924 and was home to several big-name stars over the years: Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, Anthony Quinn, and Greta Garbo. The house contains five bedrooms and five bathrooms and is nearly 6,000 total square feet.
In March 1948, Garbo invited Cecil Beaton to her house on Bedford Drive to take pictures of her at the house. These pictures were shot outside in the garden on the grounds. Beaton had photographed her in New York in April 1946 prior to this and would shoot pictures of her intermittently over the next two decades.
Hillcrest Road
710 N. Hillcrest Road
Groucho Marx built this house in the early 1930s after rattling off a string of hit movies for Paramount. The house contains 14 rooms within its 7,900 square feet including a billiard room, 6 bedrooms, and 5 bathrooms.
With a total cost of $44,000, this house had a few hiccups during its construction. First, the construction company went bankrupt in the middle of the house being built. This caused the mortgage company to repossess the property until Groucho paid the remaining debt on the property in full.
In 1945, Groucho sold the Beverly Hills property for $200,000. Years later it was owned by television host Ralph Edwards and film composer Lalo Schifrin after that.
1001 N. Hillcrest Road
1001 N. Hillcrest Road was the home of Dinah Shore. The house contains four bedrooms and four bathrooms and is 6,400 square feet in total area.
1012 N. Hillcrest Road
Morey Amsterdam of The Dick Van Dyke Show lived at 1012 N. Hillcrest Road. The house he lived in was unfortunately razed. A new house was built on the land in 2016, which is nearly 8,500 square feet with six bedrooms and eight bathrooms.
1083 N. Hillcrest Road
Groucho Marx owned this property from 1957 until his death in 1977. This 6,000-square-foot house was designed by famed architect Wallace Neff for Marx and his wife Eden. Of the features included in this five-bedroom, six-bathroom home is a Terrazzo and walnut floors, and a swimming pool with a waterfall.
1174 N. Hillcrest Road
Elvis Presley owned this Beverly Hills home from 1967 to 1973 and spent a considerable amount of time with his wife Priscilla and daughter Lisa Marie here.
Built in 1958 on just a little over an acre of land, the nearly 5,400 square foot house features three bedrooms and five bathrooms. The gated home includes a swimming pool and floor-to-ceiling windows.
The house was bought by The King for $400,000 and sold for $25.5 million in 2019. The previous owner Peter Morton, founder of the Hard Rock Cafe restaurant brand, wanted to demolish the property after buying it for $10 million in 2012. However, he changed his mind after public outrage about the proposed demolition reached him.
1187 N. Hillcrest Road
In 1970, Danny Thomas built a mega-mansion at 1187 N. Hillcrest Drive. The 18,000-square-foot home contains ten bathrooms and nine bedrooms on over two acres of land with sprawling views of Los Angeles.
Some of the features included in this Beverly Hills home are a hand-painted ceiling, a Baccarat chandelier, and a full-size ballroom.
San Ysidro Drive
1103 San Ysidro Drive
1103 San Ysidro Drive was the home of Danny Kaye, who rented the house in 1949 from Mutiny on the Bounty director Lewis Milestone before purchasing it from him a year later. Built in 1931, the 6,600 square foot house contains five bedrooms and seven bathrooms.
Kaye and his wife, composer Sylvia Fine called this property home until their deaths in 1987 and 1991 respectively. Fine would typically compose music on the piano for Kaye’s films such as Five Pennies, while Kaye watched the Los Angeles Dodgers on the television a few feet away.
Over the years Kaye and Fine made updates and additions to their Beverly Hills home including a 50-foot-long indoor lap pool as well as a media room that included state-of-the-art equipment as well as black leather tables designed by Fanny Brice.
Throughout the 1950s Kaye and Fine would host black-tie parties in their back yard which would be outfitted with a dance floor. Guests at these soirees included a laundry list of Hollywood A-listers including Groucho Marx, Fred Astaire, Cary Grant, Kirk Douglas, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Gracie Allen and George Burns, Dinah Shore, and Judy Garland. The latter 3 would typically sing songs with piano accompaniment by Fine in the living room.
1106 San Ysidro Drive
1106 San Ysidro Drive was the home of Rex Harrison. The 4,700 square foot home has four bedrooms and six bathrooms. It was built in 1959.
1107 San Ysidro Drive
Vivien Leigh and Lawrence Olivier lived at 1107 San Ysidro Drive. This 8,000-square-foot house was built in 1927 and has six bedrooms and nine bathrooms.
1152 San Ysidro Drive
Raquel Welch, Jeff Chandler, Janet Leigh, and Tony Curtis all called 1152 San Ysidro Drive home over the years. Built in 1937, this lavish 4,400 square foot house contains four bedrooms and five bathrooms.
1155 San Ysidro Drive
Fred Astaire built the house on 1155 San Ysidro Drive in 1961. He bought the one-and-a-half-acre lot for $270,000 with the price of the house being $500,000. The 6,100 square foot house contains six bedrooms and seven bathrooms.
