Whitley Heights 101

6621 Emmet Terrace

6621 Emmet Terrace was built in 1922 by architect Rex D. Weston. Weston was known for his creation of bungalow houses and published several books on bungalow homes in the 1920s. This one story house consists of six rooms (living room, kitchen, dining room, 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom and a small room off of the back bedroom. A one-car detached garage remains on the road below the home.

By February of 1923, film actress Phyllis Haver purchased the tiny home. Haver was born in Douglas, Kansas in 1899 to James and Minnie Shanks Haver. By 1910, her grandmother and mother moved 11 year old Phyllis Haver to South Los Angeles into a newly built tiny bungalow home located at 4007 Budlong Avenue (see below). Minnie had left her ill-tempered husband and worked as a stenographer.

Ten years later, Minnie had remarried to Lee Malone, a demonstrator for a tractor company and moved Phyllis, now 18 years old, to another home located at 3924 Wisconsin Avenue (pictured below), near Exposition Park. Phyllis graduated Manual Arts High School with her best friend, Marie Prevost. Prevost was hired by Mack Sennett and became one of his “Bathing Beauties”; Prevost helped her best friend out and was able to get Phyllis a job as one of Mack Sennett’s Bathing Beauties.

Haver’s first film role, at the age of 17, was in a comedy short film called “Sunshine” produced by Keystone Film Company in which Prevost and Gloria Swanson both had minor roles. A year later, Haver appeared in 14 Keystone Comedies as Swanson now was getting bigger parts for them. Swanson is pictured below on Haver’s back as featured Mack Sennett Bathing Beauties.

For the next several years, Haver continued to work for Keystone appearing in dozens of short comedy films and was rumored of having a love affair with Mack Sennett, nearly 20 years her senior. However, Sennett also had an on-and-off tumultuous affair with actress Mabel Normand. Normand must have renewed her hold on Mack Sennett. When she recently returned from Europe in 1923, she managed win back his affections that the Haver-Sennett love affair was broken off. Haver disappeared from the lot, and Normand was given the lead in “The Extra Girl” in spite of the fact that Haver already had done two weeks’ work in the picture. Sennett and Normand are both pictured below on the lot of his studio.

Haver left for England to shoot MGM’s “The Christian” starring Richard Dix and then appeared in Buster Keaton’s “The Balloonatic”. She did not have a contract but was able to get roles from several film companies in 1923 and 1924.

In 1921, Haver, her mother and stepfather moved from Wisconsin Avenue to a 4 room house on Sunset Boulevard. As Haver’s salary began to rise, she began to invest in real estate. In 1922, she purchased a home at 1519 Stanley Avenue (pictured below) in the Mid-City area of Los Angeles. With every new house she bought, her mother and step-father seemed to move with her.

In February of 1923, Haver purchased this Whitley Heights house from the original owner, Bertha McGrath. Upon entry into the home, there is a 23 x 14 living room with a fireplace and beams on the ceiling.

Behind the living room is a 12 x 17 dining room in which the entry to the kitchen is to the right. There is a beautiful stained glass window in the rear of the home with two doors which lead to the back yard.

The 11 x 17 kitchen has two doors which also lead outside and has a washer & dryer closet in the back.

There is a small hallway that leads off from the left side of the living room with a 12 x 11 bedroom in the front of the home.

Behind this bedroom is the only bathroom (8 x 5) which is also accessed from the hallway.

Another 12 x 11 bedroom is in the rear of the property and entered from the hallway.

A 12 x 7 sunroom/office is just behind the second bedroom which can also be accessed from the dining room (as shown below). This is not a very big house, but its intricate details make is a quaint and charming bungalow. Haver sold the home in March of 1925 for $20,000.

The house went through several owners during the next 90 years and started to become neglected by the time it was put on the market in 2011. The house sold for $460,000 and the new owner fixed up the house to sell it for $906,000 in 2016. The house sold again in 2021 for $1.39 million and is currently assessed at $1.5 million (not bad for a little bungalow).

In March of 1924, Haver purchased the entire Whitley Court bungalow apartments located at 1720-1728 1/2 Whitley Avenue where she lived with her parents until 1928. These bungalow apartments have housed many actors including; Donald Crisp (1921), Connie Leon (1938), Director Cullen Tate (1922), Adele Watson (1924), and Theda Bara (1930s). During this time period, Haver worked with actors John Gilbert and Norma Shearer on “The Snob” and was rumored to having an affair with John Gilbert while his tumultuous marriage to Leatrice Joy was on the rocks. It was also rumored that Gilbert was sleeping with Shearer. Haver was also rumored to have been with sleeping with JFK’s father, Joseph Kennedy, who had numerous extramarital affairs with Joan Crawford, Gloria Swanson, and Marlene Dietrich. Haver indicated that Kennedy was not good in bed and he ended up leaving her for actress Evelyn Brent.

In 1927, Haver got the lead role in “Chicago” as Roxie Hart (she was the first actress to play this role) for DeMille Pictures Corporation. Another first for her was that Max Factor made false eyelashes out of human hair and she was the first to wear them.

In 1928, Haver purchased an English tutor style house located at 1626 N. Orange Grove Avenue located just off the Sunset Strip. That year, she starred in “The Office Scandal” and was working with actress Margaret Livingston. Livingston introduced her to playboy millionaire grocer Bill Seaman. She was in love.

In April of 1929, the 27 year old actress married William Seaman, 35, in New York City. Seaman’s good friend, then Mayor Jimmy Walker of New York City, married the two at the home of cartoonist Rube Goldberg. Then the newlyweds went on their honeymoon to Europe. Haver, now married, permanently retired from show business claiming, “I wanted to get out while I was ahead”. Her last film was “She Couldn’t Say No” in which she had a minor role of a showgirl; the Warner Brothers movie premiered in 1930.

For the next 16 years, Haver was Ms. William Seaman; the newly married couple moved into Seaman’s penthouse apartment on the 16th floor, at 136 Waverly Place. “The Waverly” is a 16 story building in Greenwich Village which was erected in 1928 with 76 apartments.

By 1935, the Seamans moved into another building located at 121 Hudson Street. This building was completed in 1891 in the Tribeca area of New York City. William’s father and uncle bought the building shortly after it was built as a warehouse to use for their grocery business.

In 1939, the Seamans moved to a third building, 25 Central Park West; the building was built in 1931 and is located near Central Park in Manhattan. They would remain in this apartment until March of 1945 when an unhappy Phyllis went to Reno and filed for divorce on the grounds of “extreme cruelty”. Haver stated to the press, “Bill has too much vitality. I’m getting older and I want a little peace”. She was 43; he was 52 and apparently still a bit of a playboy.

A year after the divorce, it was reported that she “regained her figure” and was “dating a Britisher”, but then seemed to disappear again from the limelight. Haver purchased a secluded old farm home in Sharon, Connecticut where she lived, battling depression and being alone, except for her housekeeper. She attempted suicide in 1959 with a bottle of pills. A year later, her housekeeper found her dead in her bedroom after finding the doors locked and entered the house through a window. The medical examiner declared she committed suicide by barbiturate poisoning. Apparently, the 60 year old former actress was mourning the recent death of Mack Sennett and was depressed because she was “unable to help him when he needed it the most”. Haver was not aware that Sennett had been living in extreme poverty before he died. Haver was buried at the Grassy Hill Cemetery in Falls Village, CT.