Whitley Heights 101

6861 Iris Circle

6861 Iris Circle was designed and built by real estate developer Bruce McCaskill in 1926. McCaskill had previously worked with artist Charles DeGrolle to build 6835 Iris Circle and McCaskill resided at 6613 Whitley Terrace while DeGrolle lived at 2178 Fairfield Avenue (demolished for freeway). 6861 Iris Circle is a Spanish villa consisting of 3,238 square feet with 4 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms. There is a private garden courtyard which is surrounded by a wall in the front of the home which leads into the entryway.

The main living area of the home is on the upper floor, which consists of a sunken living room with a fireplace, kitchen with a breakfast nook, dining room, and primary bedroom and bathroom. The lower floor contains the other bedrooms and bathrooms.

Newlyweds William Powell and Carole Lombard moved into this home after their honeymoon in June of 1931. Powell started acting on stage in 1912 and then moved to Paramount Pictures in 1924 where he would remain for seven years. Unlike many silent screen actors, sound helped his career and he switched to Warner Brothers in 1931. This was where he was paired with Carole Lombard in Man of the World and Ladies Man. Powell became quickly smitten with Lombard and would ask her to marry him “every hour on the hour”. Actually, Powell wanted to marry her and quit acting, but she was not going to give up her career and continued to turn down his proposals. Once Powell started supporting her career, she agreed to marry him and they wed on June 26, 1931. Below is Powell and Lombard in the Whitley Heights home circa 1931-he was 38 and she was 22. He was refined and sophisticated and she was carefree and had a foul-mouth. These differences caused their marriage to last only two years and divorced in August of 1933.

Carole Lombard (born Jane Alice Peters) was born by a wealthy family, but raised in Los Angeles by her mother after her parents divorced. Lombard started her acting career at the age of 12 and was eager to continue acting; she signed a contract with Fox at the age of 16. However, her career almost ended right before her 19th birthday when a shattered car window from an accident left a scar on her face. Makeup to cover the scar helped her to overcome this obstacle and she appeared on 15 short comedies with Mack Sennett Productions. In 1930, she signed with Paramount Pictures who began casting her in dramas. In 1932, Lombard starred in “No Man of Her Own” with Clark Gable and in 1936 she paired once again with William Powell and filmed “My Man Godfrey” in which she was nominated for best actress. Below is Lombard in the Iris Circle living room circa 1931.

Although Lombard and Powell divorced, they remain friends. In 1936, while at a party, she met up with Clark Gable and a romance started. Gable was separated from his wife, Ria Langham, but she did not want to divorce him. Gable gave her $500,000 in order to divorce him which became final in 1939. Soon after the divorce, Lombard and Gable eloped in Arizona. They bought a 20 acre ranch in Encino as both loved the outdoors and riding horses. They wanted to start a family, but Lombard found out that she was not able to have children. Below is Lombard at the Iris Circle home circa 1931.

When the United States entered war in 1941, Lombard decided to travel to her home state of Indiana to attend a war bond rally with her mother and Gable’s press agent. She was able to help raise $2 million dollars at the event. The group was scheduled to return to Los Angeles by train, but Lombard was eager to get home and took a plane. The others were afraid to fly and wanted to keep the original plans. A coin was flipped and Lombard won the coin toss-they would fly. In early morning of January 16, 1942, they boarded a TWA flight enroute to Los Angeles. After refueling in Las Vegas, the flight took off at 7 p.m. and crashed into the Potosi Mountains, approximately 30 miles away. All of the 22 people aboard the plane died, including 15 Army soldiers. The cause of the crash was attributed to the flight crew’s inability to properly navigate over the mountains surrounding Las Vegas. Lombard was buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery next to her mother, where Gable would later join her despite being married twice before. Powell was also devastated when Lombard died. Below is Lombard in the Whitley Heights home in 1931.

After Powell and Lombard divorced in 1933, Powell moved to MGM and made a series of successful movies. In 1935, he filmed Reckless opposite Jean Harlow and they clicked both on and off the screen and quickly became engaged. One day, while Powell was filming Double Wedding (1937) on one MGM soundstage, Harlow became ill on another. She was finally taken to the hospital, where she died. Her death greatly upset both Powell and Myrna Loy, and he took six weeks off from making the movie to deal with his sorrow. After that he traveled, not making another MGM film for a year. He eventually did five sequels to “The Thin Man,” the last one in 1947. He also received his third Academy Award nomination for his work in Life with Father (1947). His screen appearances became less frequent after that, and his last role was in 1955. Powell died in Palm Springs, California, on March 5, 1984, at the age of 91 from heart failure, nearly 30 years after his retirement. He is buried at the Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California, near his third wife Diana Lewis, and his only child, son William David Powell.