Hollywood stakes out its area

Malibu Beach

Tourists and locals throng Sunset Boulevard

An avenue of palms in Beverly Hills

Storefronts on Rodeo Drive

Is there anywhere in the world like it? There are world famous studios and multi-million dollar star homes that stretch along the neighbourhood’s tree-lined avenues. But more than anything, Hollywood is a state of mind. The extremes, the excesses, the highs, the lows — nowhere does it happen more sensationally than in this part of the world. You’d hardly fault me then for being excited about spending three whole days exploring Hollywood and the spiffy neighbourhoods of Beverly Hills and Malibu.

Glamour meets money just 6km away from tinsel town. The city of Beverly Hills is where they come when they’ve made their greenbacks. By American standards, it’s a small town, except the average Joe here is a millionaire many times over. Everything about Beverly Hills screams money — even the fireplugs in Beverly Hills are painted a gleaming silver — and the authorities have taken pains to keep it that way. So there are no eyesores like smokestacks or even billboards. We didn’t even come across any hospitals or cemeteries here. It’s said that, technically, no one is born, or dies in Beverly Hills. And you wonder why 90210 is the most famous pin code in the world!

So tight is the security ring in Beverly Hills that we were stopped by LAPD officers who grew suspicious after we made two rounds of a particular block. They checked our documents, saluted and left.

Of course no trip to Beverly Hills would be complete without visiting its famed retail nerve centre, Rodeo Drive. Our companion and guide, Sue told us that “buyers at shops here don’t bat an eyelid at dropping a hundred grand on a single day’s shopping”. Another surprising info-byte from Sue: even big stars like Michael Douglas and Julia Roberts can only shop here by appointment.

At Rodeo Drive, every super brand you can think of jostles for space. We passed Armani, Chanel and Valentino and peeked at some of the most dazzling diamonds in the store windows of Cartier and Tiffany. We also stood in front of, the shop that has earned a reputation for being the costliest in the world — Bejan.

Next we headed to Sunset Boulevard, crammed with legendary restaurants, boutiques and nightclubs. The billboards here were out of this world. One particular billboard advertising a car company made us stop and stare in amazement. A security guard, who must’ve figured we were tourists, told us the billboard costs the company “300 grand”. We also came across a billboard devoted to Disney’s Aladdin. And Aladdin’s lamp was emitting real smoke.

Next, we drove out just beyond the Sunset Strip to catch a glimpse of Spago, one of Hollywood’s most celebrated restaurants. It’s played host to some of the best of old Hollywood like Gene Kelly and George Burns, and continues to attract patrons like Jack Nicholson, Sharon Stone, Oprah Winfrey and Clint Eastwood, to name a few.

Our next stop was the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, which gives out the Oscars. The Academy’s new centre was housed in a wonderful old structure resembling a Spanish mission. But it’s original Wiltshire Boulevard office is the place where the Oscar nominations are announced each February. We visited this office too, and on the fourth floor came across a small gallery filled with movie exhibits. The most intriguing piece was the original, large model of the building designed by Gary Cooper’s architect (Howard Roark) in the 1949 movie, The Fountainhead.

Also, on show was Clark Gable’s Oscar statuette that was auctioned off to the highest bidder, despite attempts by the Academy to prevent the sale. Fortunately, the highest bidder was Steven Spielberg, who paid $607,500 for the statuette, and then graciously donated it to the Academy.

During our three days in Hollywood, we spent one entire day taking in celebrity homes. Our guide was Hugh Bradford, a Hollywood specialist from Universal Studios. Starting off from Roxbury Drive, we passed by a train of colonial homes and modern architectural splendours. We saw the former homes of Lucille Ball, Spencer Tracy and Maureen ’Sullivan.

In Beverly Hills, it seems that each street competes with the other. On Bedford Drive, I was thrilled to pass by the homes of such legends as Frank Sinatra, Anthony Quinn, Greta Garbo and Ava Gardner. On Carlwood Drive, the stately mansions of Mick Jagger, Cher, and the late Marilyn Monroe stand tall. Outside, 144 Carlwood Drive, where Elvis Presley lived and died, we found a bunch of youngsters still hanging around.

But there is one place that can compete with Beverly Hills for movie star homes. That’s Malibu! And our last day in Hollywood was spent exploring this uber- exclusive neighbourhood.

From the late 1800s to 1938, Malibu was owned by Frederick and May Rindge, Massachusetts millionaires who’d founded Union Oil and Southern California Edison. Malibu became quite a favourite with movie stars when the then remote area was finally opened up to the public for the first time in 1929. The widowed May Rindge was at the time encountering money problems, and invited a few wealthy celebrities to build vacation homes on her private Malibu beach. She expected this to be a temporary arrangement, of course — the stars could only rent the land, not own it.

Who were among the first film stars to shack up in Malibu? In the early 1930s, Barbara Stanwyck, Ronald Coleman and Gloria Swanson were some of the first big names to rent homes in the new ‘colony’ on the shore. Later that decade, May Rindge finally decided to allow Malibu residents to buy their properties, and the Colony grew at an even faster rate.

Just being there, we understood why the stars love Malibu. Hollywood celebrities prize their privacy, and the Colony offers more than a beautiful ocean view — it offers protection from the prying eyes of the public. There’s a guarded gate at the entrance to keep out sightseers, and there’s even a police station at the Colony’s west end. We drove around the Colony and caught glimpses of bungalows belonging to Tom Hanks, Tatum ’Neal and Mel Brooks. Now we knew real estate prices in Malibu were no child’s play, but it still came as a shock to hear that the rent on Sting’s house on Malibu Colony Drive was $25,000 a month.

Our guide for the day was Ruth Robins, an impish student, who worked as a guide during weekends. She told us that although the Colony’s celebrity residents valued their privacy, and didn’t want visitors on ‘their’ beach, the fact remains that coastal access laws enable the public to visit a particular stretch.

Ruth knew of a few (almost hidden) legal public access routes to the Colony’s front beach, most notably the “Zonker Harris Accessway” — named after the suntan-crazy Doonesbury cartoon character. We had the legal right to walk on the beach, once we reached it via these public access ways. So as long as we stayed near the surf’s edge, we were perfectly within our rights to stroll there.

Ruth took us along another route, which accessed the Malibu Pier and Carbon Beach. Carbon is home to almost every major movie star’s house. There’s even a rock called Deal Maker’s Rock, where the heads of studios meet and exercise in the morning, and make and break deals.

We continued our star-home gazing at Broadbeach, which houses the bungalows of such superstars as Pierce Bronson, Robert De Niro, Sly Stallone, Mel Gibson, Steven Spielberg and Robert Redford. Okay, so we didn’t bump into Stallone or Spielberg. Yet just strolling along Malibu’s Pacific coast on a bright sunny day was exhilarating. This is one of LA’s most beautiful natural areas, and cruising along the Pacific Coast Highway, right next to the crashing surf of the blue ocean, has to rank as one of the quintessential Southern California experiences.

Photographs of Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive by the author