[After reading the essay about the Early American origins of Hollywood Regency, return here, Patient Reader, and click. You’ll see a short movie about the how the pretty, sedate, but often hilarious faux-horsey style came to dominate the streets-scape — the “program” — of many neighborhoods of LA. This is especially true where the Industry settled — Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Silverlake, WeHo, the Valley. Critics dismiss these as knock-offs, or “knock-offs of the knock-offs” — though even the marvelous show-place homes in Bel-Air were dismissed as such when they were built in the mid-century. And, obviously some knock-offs are better than others. But Neoclassical style is knock-offs right the way down, with Palladio knocking off Greece and Rome and John Nash knocking off Palladio and William Strickland knocking off Nash, and Jefferson spinning the whole thing toward the Federal, which had two or three revivals just in the 19th century. And simultaneously, the vernacular cottages and self-built farm houses of the American homestead became so clever at aping the Neoclassical that the Hollywood Regency architects were often quoting the “feel” of vernacular small-town America, with all the Hollywood gloss and gloop they could pour on. So hail the knock-offs! They ARE the style, only built on a smaller scale, or even just tacked on to the outside of a stucco box. Many commercial buildings and apartment buildings in the style are worthy of notice, and of critique, and of preservation, just as much as George Cukor’s famous house is. LA should guard these houses like Philadelphia guards her row-houses, Brooklyn her brownstones, and San Francisco her Painted Ladies. ]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11xR2YRFdIf3xECG0Ywj_ZvNVCH_qydSC/view?usp=sharing

The home-grown LA style known as “Hollywood Regency” is not to be taken literally, either as a style, or a name for a style. It is a dismissive epithet that stuck — like Gothic or Stick Style or Methodist; a campy in-joke put-down, nailing the casually misleading social pretensions of some of the owners of the houses. Whether a huge Bel Air mansion, a secluded Valley Village cottage, a chic designer retail shopping center, or a swank West Hollywood apartment complex — and all these must be included in the style; restaurants too.

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These are not academically-researched copies of London’s Neoclassical masterpieces. Instead, they are a highly mannered, but extremely exuberant vocabulary for treating a European villa with American design tricks, outre gay decorator ideas, and the elegant Art-Deco Hellenic polish that Hollywood evolved out of 300 years of Palladian-Anglo-Franco-American houses in the Colonial East Coast. In fact, one of the greatest sources for Hollywood’s style, due to the shared latitude, and similar sunny climate, and a similar gracious, but exploitative economy, was the graceful stuccoed Federal style of the Carolina Lowcountry.

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THE ULTIMATE SOURCES OF FEDERAL ARCHITECTURE IN AMERICA:

Patient Reader, recall the history of the builders of the following houses, and about their tensions and rivalries and personal economies, and how important their struggles were. Now put all THAT passion and patriotism into “Hollywood Regency,” the optimistic, nostalgic architecture of the Depression and WWII years. But then, with a sag, understand this inspiring grab-bag of American History as merely so much classy B-roll background for the staircase unveiling of one’s bias-cut gown by Adrian, with matching mob cap; or for the cabana unveiling of one’s toned body, diving into the pool at the Toluca Lake place.

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In the 30s. when the often gay, often English designers and decorators were asked to order up columns and urns and white porches and wrought-iron gates and carriage lamps by the ton for the studios and/or rich clients, they sniffed, “Oh, I see, you want all that mannered, dandy-ish nude stucco Greek Regency stuff? Well, darling, then let’s just throw a taupe drape over a white column and call it a day.” That’s exactly what clients wanted, for the movies themselves had taught Hollywood that Life Was Drag. One didn’t have to BE Medea, or Dolley Madison, to live in a chic Greek or Federal house. So architects turned out faux (i.e., “Hollywood”) gestures of Federal Period (i.e., “Regency”) houses. These buildings got stripped through the ultra-efficient Modernism of the Hollywood design process, into that image in your mind of “Tara…. or even Twelve Oaks! If I could only live there with Ashley….” That’s Hollywood Regency.

Few Industry types are actually from the FFV — except, tellingly and fascinatingly, Randolph Scott, who provides an important clue to how the style evolved. The revered Hollywood actor was born in Orange, Virginia, and through locally-bred horsemanship and, ahem, being Randolph Scott, came to the attention of Marion du Pont, the owner of James Madison’s Montpelier. She was A du Pont (!) and a horse breeder of first rate during the Golden Age of American equine culture. He was one of Hollywood’s gods-on-horseback. Both were bi-sexual. So they re-did Montpelier in Hollywood Regency because it seemed, by the ’30s, MORE gracious and Southern and romantic and beautiful than the famous Dolley Madison version of the house. THAT’s the essence of Hollywood Regency. [The Park Service has since restored it to Federal appearance; good! Hollywood Regency belongs in LA.]

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One has always lived in Hollywood Regency “as if…” as if one were a product of Philadelphia dancing assemblies, New York publishing houses, Boston universities, or Charleston Society’s summer barbecues. And as if one gets that these fantasies are impossible luxuries for a bum like one. But on the other hand, note the clipped lawn in the honor court, the 14-foot ceilings, the hardwood floors, the graceful turned iron railings, the modern interiors…one could get used to an old fashioned house, especially when it’s rent-controlled.