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T/ze Ziv/ng room o/ John McDermott's home contains reminders of pictures that starred Norma Talmadge, Rudolph Valentino, Mary Pickford
and many others.
JOHN McDERMOTT calls it his "crazy house." A low, rambling structure, strung out along the face of a cliff high above Cahuenga Pass in Beverly Hills, it greets the eye as a thing part Egyptian, part Turkish, part Navajo, and with such touches of modern architecture as may be found anywhere "east of the water tower."
There are angles reminiscent of igloos constructed during the Eskimo renaissance, and others suggesting medieval castles with moats and drawbridges. There isn't another house like it in Hollywood, nor, in fact, in the entire world.
It is made of studio props!
John McDermott is a scenario writer for Famous PlayersLasky — just a man trying to get along on a salary of something like two thousand dollars a week. Three or four years ago he found himself in need of physical training, but didn't want to waste his time and energy in a gym. He doesn't believe in men donning little panties and romping around a hall when there is real work to be done outside.
So he decided to build a home with his own hands, the like of which no one ever had seen. It would dazzle with originality, with plaster gods, sliding panels, underground passageways, good books, and mystery.
With this thought, McDermott selected a lonely cliff, accessible only to men on foot. He acquired title to a piece of ground reaching onward and upward and downward to the bottom of a canyon. Somewhere above, he would build a home.
Then he began bringing up material, some of which he carried on his shoulders. Laborers helped him to clear off a level space, open a road, and get cement up the cliff. Presently his construction began. McDer
The Strangest
It is made entirely of odds and ends, salvaged seen, and in it dwells a noted scenario writer,
By A. L.
mott was the chief architect. Likewise, he was the designer, craftsman, motive power, and operating force.
He had seen motion-picture sets of exquisite design, used an hour or two, then discarded when the picture was finished. He had seen these artistic creations lie for weeks and months disintegrating in the sun and rain, when, if they had been salvaged, they would have lasted for years. This gave him the idea for his hillside home, and he began collecting. Here is what happened :
The walls of John McDermott's house were made from composition board discarded from sets at the Universal studio.
The girders were salvaged from the enormous palace built for "The Thief of Bagdad."
Some of the roofing came from "The Phantom of the Opera."
The tip of the smallest tower was cut from the broken propeller of an airplane wrecked during the making of Buster Keaton's "The Navigator."
The tombstones built into the wall had been made for "The Hunchback of Notre Dame."
Some grinning skulls of cement were found on the old Metro lot when that historic spot was abandoned.