Rachmaninoff hill-top rental, Beverly Hills

Click on photos to enlarge.

I’m not quite sure why, but I have a soft spot for this particular address over all of the Russian culture-related addresses I have photographed in the Los Angeles area. It’s one of the few where I have no coherent image of the actual house itself. I was able only to shoot a series of photos of the approach to the property and the gates that keep prying eyes like mine out. Even when I did step a little over the bounds of propriety and peered over or between the large green gates, there still was nothing visible other than woodsy territory (in the photo immediately below), and two driveways leading in different directions (the last photo in the block immediately below, taken through a crack between the gate doors). Yes, there are bits of two structures visible in this shot, but, even if they are primary residence structures, they don’t give us any real idea as to what they look like. As such, this post consists mostly of environs, and I love the environs. So woodsy and isolated. You can only assume (but I think with good reason), that much of what you see would have been there when Sergei Rachmaninoff rented this property from the silent film star Eleanor Boardman in 1942. Most of the trees look like original landscaping. The bricks walls, with the local boulders used as decor, the gates and the mailbox all look like they probably were there when Rachmaninoff passed through briefly. Actually, it was the mailbox that got to me. Such a simple little object, but when you stand next to it, you can imagine Sergei Rachmaninoff reaching out to open it in order to find mail from – from whom? Walt Disney? Vladimir Horowitz? Michael Chekhov? Bruno Walter? Electric bills from Southern Edison? Whatever. If you ever make it up here, reach your hand out to that little catch on top of the mailbox and see if you don’t feel a little something shoot through your system.
The “genealogy” of this place is impressive. It was built for the director King Vidor by the architect Wallace Neft, known for creating the “California style,” in 1928. In subsequent years following Vidor’s tenancy it was owned or occupied by an astonishing number of remarkable individuals: John Barrymore, Katherine Hepburn, Marlon Brando, Richard Harris, Candice Bergman, Stephen Stills, Barbra Streisand and many more. The address these days is 9941 Tower Lane. Long ago it was known as 6 Tower Road, and it is possible that it was known as 1139 Tower Road (or Lane) when Rachmaninoff was here. The very cool Movieland Directory site, from which I’ve cribbed most of my info so far, informs us that the street address was 1139 for awhile in the 1940s, but when exactly in the ’40s it doesn’t say. Regardless of the slipping and sliding numbers and names, this is the place where Rachmaninoff first set down his bags when he came to look for a permanent place to hang his hat in Los Angeles. As I have written elsewhere on this site, he shortly thereafter moved to a home that he purchased in the heart of residential Beverly Hills. If you’re interested, look to your left, find the name “Sergei Rachmaninoff” and click on it…

In a lecture delivered in Santa Monica in April 2015, Keenan Reesor, a pianist and musicologist, wrote about Rachmaninoff’s debut at the Hollywood Bowl on July 17 and 18, 1942, and about his recent relocation to Southern California: “…The Rachmaninoffs had just moved to Los Angeles. In May they rented the house at 9941 Tower Lane in Beverly Hills and, enjoying the atmosphere, decided immediately to buy a house nearby at 610 North Elm Drive.” Here is how Reesor describes Rachmaninoff’s stature at the time, including a quote from a review of the Hollywood Bowl performance in the Los Angeles Times:
“…[Rachmaninoff’s] music had been performed by an array of illustrious musicians, among them pianists Josef Hofmann, Vladimir Horowitz, and Benno Moiseiwitsch and conductors Albert Coates, Eugene Goossens, Otto Klemperer, Pierre Monteux, Artur Rodzinski, Leopold Stokowski, and Bruno Walter. He had come to be regarded in Los Angeles as one of the greatest pianists and composers of his time. The capstone of it all was Rachmaninoff’s Hollywood Bowl debut—also his last appearance in the city—in two performances of his Second Concerto on July 17 and 18. ‘It was an occasion,’ wrote Isabel Morse Jones. ‘The large audience was aware of its significance and offered . . . the revered pianist, who now makes his home here, homage and appreciation.’ The orchestra, too, ‘greeted him by rising when he came in. . . . It was resplendent music Rachmaninoff made last night.'”
Our trusty Movieland Directory site tells us that Vladimir Horowitz was a frequent guest here, and that he and Rachmaninoff would often sit down at pianos (or the same piano?) and entertain guests. Just stop and imagine that for a moment. There is an account of the first time Rachmaninoff (as conductor) and Horowitz (pianist) met and became fast friends. It was in 1928 in New York. I will let Walter Monfried, a journalist for the Milwaukee Journal in 1943, pick up the story:
“Sergei Rachmaninoff was conducting his own second concerto and the pianist of the evening was Vladimir Horowitz. The performance was one of surpassing beauty and perfection. After the concerto was finished, the composer shook hands with the young pianist and said simply, ‘This is the way I have always dreamed that my concerto should be played, but I never expected to hear it that way on earth.’ […] The two pianists formed a mutual admiration society and each made it a point never to miss a recital of the other. Horowitz always instructed his manager: ‘If I am out of town when Rachmaninoff plays in New York, you must telegraph me, and you must let me come back, no matter where I am or what engagement I have.’ And whenever Horowitz performed in New York, Rachmaninoff never was absent and always was the last to leave the hall.”
Finally, a study guide for students by Mary Jane Ayers adds a bit of atmosphere and detail to Rachmaninoff’s life more or less at the time he was moving West, away from turmoil in Europe.
“Rachmaninoff spent the next 20 years successfully touring Europe and North America as a piano virtuoso and conductor, working with dozens of orchestras as sort of a ‘citizen of the world.’ He continued to compose piano, vocal, and orchestral music. He never lost his desire to return to Russia, saying, ‘even the air here [in the US] is not like in Russia—it smells differently.’ As he got older, he felt most comfortable in the company of fellow Russians who had also been driven from their homeland. Unfortunately, by 1938, his world was again turned upside down by forces beyond his control. Following the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany, Europe was once more on the brink of a world war. It was no longer safe for Rachmaninoff and his family to travel there. In 1939 he returned to America. His fellow Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, who had also fled from Russia, called Rachmaninoff ‘a six-foot-two scowl.’
In 1942, Rachmaninoff moved to Beverly Hills, California, and in 1943 he became a US citizen. Sadly, he died of cancer just one month later. In his last few days he wrote, ‘Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is never enough for music.’ He was 70 years old.”

 

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