Part 3: Taylor Swift bought my childhood home
A bit of Hollywood History
My childhood home that Taylor Swift bought was built for my grandad, movie mogul and producer Samuel Goldwyn; his wife, my grandmother, actress and Vogue model Frances Howard; and their son, my father, Samuel Goldwyn Jr. It was designed by architect Donald Honnald and supposedly finished by set designers during the Golden Age of Hollywood in 1934.
My grandmother Frances supervised the details of construction and interior design, down to minute details. According to my grandfather’s authorized biography, Goldwyn, by A. Scott Berg, my grandpa didn’t even see the house from when he first started building it until my grandmother took him there one day after work at the studio when it was completely finished. She had all his clothes (he was known to be a total clotheshorse with custom made suits and shoes) hung in the closet and folded in their respective drawers. After inspecting all the work she had done, he shouted over the curved stairwell to Frances, who was patiently waiting in the hallway below, “Frances, there’s no soap in the dish in my bathroom!” Men…
The house became famous for the parties and dinners that were, at the time, the hottest ticket in Hollywood. Guests included Charlie Chaplin, Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracey, Eleanor Roosevelt, Clark Gable, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Cole Porter, Lucille Ball… to name drop just a handful. And when I tell you they entertained…I used to go through the basement as a kid and the huge cupboards down there were filled with relics of my grandparent’s party accouterments—cigarette boxes and individual cigarette cups and ashtrays for tables; finger bowls and doilies and cases (cases!) of 1930s Baccarat crystal sherry glasses, champagne coupes and the like. Now you don’t put these kinds of glasses in the dishwasher, mind you, so that’s some serious party game.
My grandfather also hosted poker games, at which he and other studio heads would gamble huge sums of money and sometimes even movie stars. This was during the studio system days when stars were under contract for weekly salaries, not free agents deciding their careers for themselves. So you could potentially win the services of, let’s say, Bette Davis or Joan Crawford on loan from another studio for your picture if you had a winning hand. My grandmother wasn’t into her husband’s poker losses so he tried to hide his habit from her. He used to take my dad to the movies at Grauman’s Chinese theater on the weekend, claiming quality time with his son; but he would actually leave dad in the darkened theater to watch the movie alone while he played poker with Syd Grauman. It was their little secret. Back at our house there was an adjacent croquet field to the property where weekly competitions were held. My grandfather was a notorious cheat and guests knew to let him win or risk his famous temper.
Grandpa Sam died in 1974 and Frances passed away in 1976, when my mom was pregnant with me. Years later people would say they could still smell her distinctive perfume — Piguet’s Fracas — wafting through the halls. My mom told me that “Frances always said she would come back to haunt the house…it was her whole life. She said she was psychic. Once she visited an old stately home outside of London and got very agitated and cold and had to leave. She found out later that the place had once been used as an insane asylum.”
My dad inherited Sam and Frances’ house and he and my mom moved in on December 13, 1976, just before I was born on Christmas Day. Dad’s four other kids, my half-siblings, were in their teens and 20s, already living away from home or at boarding school so I became the first of the 3rd generation of Goldwyns to live in the house.
Beyond the paywall in this post the story continues along with Hedy Lamar, Charlie Chaplin, Marlon Brando, Howard Hughes, Irving Berlin, our dining room rules from my grandparents to my day…never seen photos & more