For sale: FLW Jr.'s Novarro House - Los Angeles, CA

[clydethecat]

Is this where Ramon Novarro was murdered?

[SDR]

Could be. Someone will have to compare dates . . .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Novarro

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[Roderick Grant]

Yes, Clyde. Novarro lived in the house from the day he took it over from Samuel to his grisly end. He picked up hustler brothers who did unseemly things to him in search of a non-existent fortune hidden in the house.

[Reidy]

A Google search on ramon novarro murder finds sources that variously place the murder in Laurel Canyon, a couple of miles west of the house, and North Hollywood (1 2), even further away.

[SDR]

From the Wiki page I posted above. For the footnote references, see page.

Murder

Novarro was murdered on October 30, 1968, by brothers Paul and Tom Ferguson, aged 22 and 17, who called him and offered their s e x u al services. He had in the past hired prostitutes from an agency to come to his Laurel
Canyon home for s e x, and the Fergusons obtained Novarro's telephone number from a previous guest.[18][19][20]

According to the prosecution in the murder case, the two young men believed that a large sum of money was hidden in Novarro's house. The prosecution accused the brothers of torturing Novarro for several hours to
force him to reveal where the non-existent money was hidden. They left the house with $20 they took from his bathrobe pocket. Novarro died as a result of asphyxiation, having choked to death on his own blood after being
beaten.[21] The two perpetrators were caught and sentenced to long prison terms, but released on probation in the mid-1970s. Both were later re-arrested for unrelated crimes for which they served longer prison terms than
for the murder of Novarro.[22] In a 1998 interview, Paul Ferguson finally assumed the blame for Novarro's death.[23]

Ramón Novarro is buried in Calvary Cemetery, East Los Angeles, California.[24] Ramón Novarro's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is at 6350 Hollywood Boulevard.

[Reidy]

I can't help thinking that if the crime had taken place in the Lloyd Wright house, the fact would have found its way into the standard accounts and that at least half of them would misattribute the house to Frank Sr.

[SDR]

Down, boy ! The Wright name has enough to contend with as it is; don't put fresh ideas into some lascivious young docent's head !

The next thing you know, it'll be Frank, Jr's mad housemaid, who killed twelve innocent tourists in the bathroom -- a couple of years ago . . .


This is the source of two of the Wiki writer's items about the murder:

Ellenberger, Allan R. (2009). Ramon Novarro: A Biography of the Silent Film Idol, 1899-1968; with a Filmography. McFarland. pp. 5–6. ISBN 978-0-7864-4676-6.

and this is a third:

"Ramon Novarro Slain on Coast. Starred in Silent Film 'Ben-Hur'. Ramon Novarro, Silent Era Star, Slain". New York Times. November 1, 1968. Retrieved 2014-09-11. "Ramon Novarro,
the Mexican-born star of scores of Hollywood movies made in the nineteen-twenties and thirties, was found bludgeoned to death in his $125,000 Hollywood Hills home early this morning."

Quotes added to the last sentence; I assume those are the words of the Times writer.

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[Craig]

Novarro had long sold the Lloyd Wright house at the time of his murder. By then he was living on Laurel Canyon. Kenneth Anger was the one who introduced the "Art Deco Dildo" myth into the murder in his book, "Hollywood Babylon."

[Craig]

3110 Laurel Canyon Boulevard was the actual address.

[SDR]

Thanks, Craig. I knew someone would get us straightened out . . .

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[clydethecat]

Novarro had long sold the Lloyd Wright house at the time of his murder. By then he was living on Laurel Canyon. Kenneth Anger was the one who introduced the "Art Deco Dildo" myth into the murder in his book, "Hollywood Babylon."

Thanks for the correction, and it's good to be able to disassociate this house from that event.

[Oak Park Jogger]

We hunted up the Navarro house last week when we were in LA. It's impressive! The actual front of the house is reached by driving past the entrance gate, making a hairpin turn to the right and descending the hill. For those of us from the flat midwest, where streets are laid out in a grid, the drive was, as my wife said, "attention getting." The Google map route looks like a piece of spaghetti randomly dropped onto floor with all its twists and turns. You'd certainly not want to go out and party heavily before driving home if you lived in that lovely home! We realized that it was trash pick-up day and everyone's garbage cans were out on the street, and sympathized for the garbage truck driver who had to navigate all the twists and turns in that neighborhood. Still, if we had the extra 4+ million, we'd buy it!!

[SDR]

Oh, yeah. I recall arriving at College Hill, just east of downtown Providence, RI, and feeling like I was going to trip and end up in the river; I had grown up on land that was almost flat. Whee ! "No need to bring my bicycle to this town," I said to myself.

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[Roderick Grant]

To be fair to the broad, flat land of the Midwest, there is a neighborhood in Minneapolis with hills and "spaghetti" roads called Tangletown. Once within its borders, if dense cloud cover makes orientation by the sun impossible, it can be hard finding one's way out. Of course, in Mpls, a "hill" amounts to a matter of maybe 3 feet from base to peak.

[SDR]

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tangl ... -93.280998


Try the hilly terrain of Marin County; one's only hope of escape is to "head downhill" . . .


https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mill+ ... 22.5449763

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