Whitley Heights 101

2226 Fairfield Avenue

2226 Fairfield Avenue was a bungalow built in 1920 by a carpenter named Willard Squires who hired James Mishler to build this house for approximately $5,500. They also built a 2-car detached garage that was located in the rear of house and accessed by a driveway on the right side of the property. The six home house, which was on the Lockland Place Tract on lot 20, was located directly on the center of the street between Cahuenga Boulevard and Odin Street. The “U” shaped house consisted of an outdoor Spanish patio which was surrounded by palm trees in the center of the “U” on the right side of the property. Squires put the house up for sale for $15,000 in 1920 after it was completed.

UCLA political science professor, Dr. Harold G. Calhoun (1885-1953), and his wife, writer Dorothy Donnell Calhoun (1889-1963), had purchased the property by 1924 and would eventually use the home as a rental property until the 1940s. The two married in 1913 in Worcester, Massachusetts and moved to New York City in 1916 where Dorothy wrote children’s books and published letters about her travels. She was also involved in the film world writing for publications and selling her work to be adapted to film. She worked on a screenplay for Richard Krebs and was a writer for “Sh Don’t Wake the Baby”, the 1915 film starring Dorothy Phillips. Harold practiced law in New York City. In 1920, they purchased 131 MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village, three townhouses with storefronts on the bottom, which have been named historical landmarks in the city (see below).

After moving to Hollywood by 1924, Harold became a college professor while Dorothy eventually became the West Coast editor for Motion Picture Magazine and its sister publication Motion Picture Classic from 1927 to 1935. Not only did Dorothy interview “A” list celebrities, she was often seen around town with them. During the early 1930s, Harold traveled to Paris and then returned to Hollywood in 1934 where he wrote about the Paris student demonstrations in a weekly newspaper column for about a year.

By 1940, the family had a home in Benedict Canyon while maintaining their rental property in Whitley Heights. They rented out both and moved to Washington D.C. where Harold worked for the Department of Justice, Antitrust Division and Dorothy became a scriptwriter for the Department of Labor as an assistant to Frances Perkins, the Secretary of Labor under President Franklin Roosevelt, where she produced radio programs. In 1953, Harold died in Greece and was buried there. Dorothy died ten years later and was buried with her family plot in Maine where she was born.

During two decades that the Calhoun’s owned 2226 Fairfield Avenue, they rented out the property to lawyers, musicians, a doctor, an actor and a screenwriter. In 1930, the house was rented out to a 21 year old actor and writer named Leonard Sillman who had just moved to Hollywood from New York City. Although the house was not zoned for commercial use, he distributed flyers around Hollywood for dancing lessons that would be taught at the house. This angered a “red-haired” next door neighbor, who saw people coming and going from the home at all hours while music played constantly. One day, he was giving lessons to actress Patsy Ruth Miller when the neighbor called the police due to the loud music. The police came to the house accompanied by the neighbor stating “it’s a house of ill repute!” Recognizing the actress, they sent Miller home and then searched his house and found half a bottle of gin in the flour bin. Sillman was arrested for liquor possession as it was prohibition and he was put in jail.

Actress Mary Miles Minter had called Sillman’s house and the housekeeper informed her what had happened. Minter, who was then accused of having a love affair with director William Desmond Taylor, did not want further negative publicity and went to the police station using her mother’s name “Mrs. Shelby” in order to bail Sillman out of jail. (Taylor was murdered in 1922 and Minter would face further scrutiny that perhaps she murdered the director, although his death remains a mystery today. Later gossip suggested that Minter’s mother, Broadway actress, Charlotte Shelby, had something to do with the murder in order to get her daughter away from him).

After she bailed him out of jail, Minter invited Sillman to spend the weekend with her in a mansion she was renting in Santa Barbara. Of course, Sillman accepted the invitation (she just got him out of jail) so she sent another man she also invited, Hungarian Joseph Dishkay to pick Sillman at his Whitley Heights bungalow and drive to Santa Barbara. According to Sillman in his autobiography, “Here Lies Leonard Sillman: Straightened out at Last”, Dishkay ran into problems after picking him up in Whitley Heights:

The young dancer eventually went on to a very successful career as a Broadway Producer and was the brother of singer & actress, June Carroll, who was married to screenwriter Sidney Carroll. Sillman produced a series of musical revues, “Leonard Sillman’s New Faces”, which introduced many major stars to Broadway audiences, such as Henry Fonda, Eartha Kitt, Imogene Coca, Inga Swenson, John Lund, Van Johnson, Carol Lawrence, Madeline Kahn, Paul Lynde and Maggie Smith. Screenwriter Sidney Carroll wrote Paul Newman’s “The Hustler” in 1961 and Shirley MacLaine’s “Gambit” in 1966. Sillman died in New York City in 1982. Below is Sillman with his sister, June Carroll, during one of his New Faces revues.

In 1942, 2226 Fairfield Avenue was rented out to a Hungarian screenwriter named Jan Lustig and his wife, Charlotte. Lustig worked in Berlin as a journalist and as a film critic, and wrote short stories. After the National Socialists came into power, he moved to France, where he wrote his first film scripts. (Lustig was a co-writer for the film “Heart of Paris” which starred filmed French actress Michele Morgan in 1937. Morgan would eventually move to Los Angeles and move into the Cielo Drive home where Sharon Tate was murdered). In 1940, the invasion of German troops forced him to flee so he and his wife moved to Hollywood. He quickly found a job at MGM and wrote the scripts for commercially successful films such as “The White Cliffs of Dover” starring Irene Dunne, “They Were Expendable” starring Robert Montgomery and John Wayne, “Homecoming” starring Clark Gable and Lana Turner, and “The Forsyth Woman” starring Errol Flynn and Greer Garson.

With Lustig’s success at MGM, he was able to move into a mansion located at 1600 Benedict Canyon Drive (former home of actor Louis Hayward) until the death of his wife in 1959. Heartbroken, Lustig moved to Munich were he was able to write a few more screenplays before his death in 1979.

Luckily 2226 Fairfield Avenue was purchased before it could be demolished in the 1950s. (It would actually be part of a parking lot across the street from the Hollywood Bowl).

The 62 x 35 house and the two-car garage were transported to 3934 East Boulevard in the Mar Vista area where it remains today. The patio could not be moved when the house was relocated in 1949. Since then, the house has undergone major transformation which only leave the exterior of the house in existence. According to the original 1949 building permit, “Building will be substantially as presently except that service porch on north side will be eliminated. Building will be painted and decorated”. Since then, a rumpus room was added to the rear of the home, a Mansard roof structure was added in 1978, the original garage was torn down and replaced in 1984, a second floor was added and the first floor completely removed in 1995 and then a swimming pool was added in 2014. However, remnants of the original house from Whitley Heights can be seen from the front.