Her house rose from the firmament. It was built against the side of an almost sheer cliff that rose from the curb on the Pacific Coast Highway at the foot of Sunset Boulevard reaching into the Palisades. From PCH it looked like a series of single garage doors or maybe even a storage building. The garage doors, as uniquely singular as they were, are even more important historically. They are the garages built in the basement of the home of one of the most thoroughly puzzling mysteries in the history of Los Angeles. They are the garages at the base of actress Thelma Todd's home. The last breath that she ever drew was behind the first door on the right. She was murdered at the height of her fame, and the case has never been cracked in eighty years. Really, I believe the house is and was haunted.
When I was young, my mother and father would take me to visit my mother's good friend, Lola Lane. Before Lane came to Hollywood with her two other famous sisters, Rosemary and Priscilla, they grew up with my mother in Indianola, Iowa. I didn't quite understand their fame because I was too young. I did get a sense of entitlement, from listening to my father and Rosemary openly and drunkenly argue. The arguments usually centered around how my parents would never understand how hard it was to grow old and fall from the public eye. Neither would they understand the sin and depravity she engaged in that would never be forgiven by Go. Usually these discussions would happen at Hollywood restaurants like Romanoff's or the Brown Derby. Sometimes people like Clark Gable or Jane Wyman would come to our table to say hello to us. They would leave and the voices would get louder and louder.
We would stay at Lola's Palisades house for the night, the weekend, and sometimes, over a week. I believe my mother was like a tether that secured Lola and Rosemary to a simpler time and place in Iowa. While there I would spend a lot of time by myself at the beach. A concrete WPA built bridge spanned across the highway starting at Lola's private garden path crossing PCH and working its way to the sidewalk at Leo Carrillo State Beach.
Fifty years later, it all becomes a murky dream. Something always smelled old and processed in the house. I could never become comfortable and would occasionally wake up crying for no particular reason. The grounds around the house were overgrown. The actress never went outside so the neglect was inevitable. She employed an old negro gentleman named Esau that I never saw work and I believe was there only to oversee the security and safety of Lola. I would walk around the perimeter of the house only to be impeded by the overgrowth of wide roses and bougainvillea thorns. The exterior plaster walls were constantly wet and the house took a terrific wind beating on the western side that faced the ocean. While it was one of the more expensive neighborhoods in Los Angeles this lot looked neglected and run down. In truth, the home's appearance was a metaphor for the woman who owned it.
The interior of the house was even more disturbing. The home was impeccably furnished with 1930's furniture. The living room was entirely white on white. It looked like Nick and Nora's Manhattan bungalow in The Thin Man. The walls were white with accented grass cloth paper. The rugs were a stark white. A white piano sat in front of a large picture window that overlooked the ocean. Overly large, entirely conspicuous framed portraits of the actress in various stages of her career ringed the walls. But mostly I remember the lingering smell of chemical and mothballs everywhere.
Lola inherited the house from her diseased husband, Roland West. Roland was Thelma Todd's husband when she died. Two of the main suspects in Thelma's death were the LA mobster.... or her husband, Roland West. Later on, after college I visited Lola. She had moved out to a beach house in Santa Barbara and she seemed entirely more upbeat and engaged in life. I thought it might have had to do with living in murdered person's house married to her widower...the murder suspect. I asked her about Roland, and she said that, "Roland was one of my best husbands." I think that says it all.
