Back in Sept. this photo appeared. I'm commenting because I am probably one of a handful of people, not involved in the production or working at Universal, who actually saw this thing.
The story was that in Sept 1973 I took a room in the house at 3331 Blair Dr. That's up the hill off of Barham/Cahuenga. The development on the west side of Barham is Hollywood Manor, the east side is Hollywood Knolls. Tracts developed in the 20's, both were fairly advanced, with underground utilities, concrete lampposts etc.
Anyway, the house had as it's rear boundary the back lot of Universal. At that time it was just bare hills with a couple of roads running through. The studio mainly used this portion of the lot for Western locales. I recall going down to the fence, this was probably late '73, and seeing a young actor named Martin Sheen shooting a scene in a made for TV production called The Story of Pretty Boy Floyd. In '74 one night they burned a big cross on one of the hills, so I went down to the fence again, and the guy told me it was for The Night Stalker, a Darren McGavin series.
Sometime in early '74 the downtown Hollywood mock-up as pictured here appeared on the back lot hillside. As I remember it had already been publicized that Universal was making the picture, so we quickly surmised that this was for "Earthquake". Apparently rather than doing a process shot they wanted to have the real sky, and the houses/hills on the other side of the pass. If you see the film it came out pretty well.
In about 1980 it was announced that Universal was going to level these bucolic hillsides for a parking lot (paging Joni Mitchell). I was long gone from the house by then, it was owned at that time by Erin Moran, a television actress who was in a couple of '70s sit-coms. I followed the story in the Times, as the neighbors were up in arms about losing their view. But private property rights prevailed, and the parking lot was constructed.
OK, there's a tenuous noir connection to this story. The homeowner I rented the room from pointed out numerous odd outlets in the interior walls, not your normal electric outlets. He claimed these were hooked up to stenography machines back in the 1930's, due to, he said, the occupant at the time: none other than Erle Stanley Gardner, prolific pulp author and, of course, the creator of Perry Mason.
A few years later I got into the title insurance business, and tried to confirm this story. I checked our title plant (Transamerica Title at 3rd & La Cienega), but the plant had a gap in the '30's documents, and I found nothing with Gardner's name on it. Of course, he could have been a tenant, who merely rented the house, and never been on title at all.
So the Gardner story went unconfirmed all these years. Until now, thanks to the online permit resource, which turned up this May 1935 document:
So Erle Stanley Gardner did, in fact, own 3331 Blair Dr. in the 1930's.
And I confirmed from research that he did indeed compose by dictating to a team of secretaries. So the multiple steno outlets in the wall story fits.
Apparently the house was his principal residence only briefly, as by '37 he settled on a ranch in Temecula. Before he was in the Blair Dr. home he was in Ventura, where he practiced law prior to his career as an author.
Much thanks to Hoss for walking me through the process for copying and posting the bldg permits.
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That wall panel is very interesting Hoss. I'm glad it survived. (are the panels on all four sides?)
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