Whitley Heights 101

2175 Fairfield Avenue

2175 Fairfield Avenue was originally a three room studio which was built in 1920 by architects Arthur S. Barnes and Charles De Grolle. In 1923 W.S. Abbott converted the studio into a 6 room house with a garage. The house once stood on the corner of Fairfield Avenue and Odin Street, one block from Highland Avenue near the Hollywood Bowl.

Motion picture director Leo Houck rented the bungalow in 1927. Houck was a former professional boxer who retired in 1923. Born in 1888 in Lancaster, PA, the American boxer was able to achieve many victories over several Hall of Famers of that time. After retiring from the ring, Houck was the boxing coach at Penn State from 1922 to 1949. He died at the age of 61 in 1950.

Houch also had a brief acting and directing career in Hollywood. He had a minor role as a boxer in Parmount Pictures “Jack and Jill” in 1917 in which William Desmond Taylor directed and Jack Pickford starred in. The 50 minute film is considered a “lost film”. In 1924, Houck played an uncredited role as a “brawler” in “The Cock-Eyed World” which was directed to Raoul Walsh which starred Lili Damita.

Houck was the assistant director to three films. “Stand Up and Cheer!” which starred Warner Baxter (Shirley Temple had a minor role in) in 1934, “Ali Baba Goes to Town” which starred Eddie Cantor in 1937, and “Second Fiddle” starring Tyrone Power in 1939. While Houck was residing at this home in 1927, he served as actor George O’Brien’s personal trainer who would take him on location on his films and have rigorous daily workouts.

In 1935 Cyril Von Baumann rented 2175 Fairfield Avenue. The doctor turned explorer turned out to be a fraud in both the medical and exploration fields. Similar to Frank Abagnale, the character in the film “Catch Me If You Can” and Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter who pretended to be a Rockefeller, Von Baumann moved from state to state with his lies that were eventually found out. Von Baumann was born in New York City 1902 but by 1930, was using “1892” as his birth year and “West Point, GA” as his birth place. He reportedly never finished high school but claimed to have graduated from the US Naval Academy and then claimed he retired with the active rank of commander.

Von Baumann also claimed that he graduated from medical school from the University of Heidelberg in 1914. By using a fake diploma, he applied for a medical license which was issued in December of 1926. He began practicing as a doctor in several states before he was caught in South Carolina in 1928 where he had his medical license revoked after an inquiry to the University of Heidelberg found that there was never a diploma issued to anyone with that name. However, Von Baumann continued to pretend he was a doctor. In 1929, he was arrested in Ohio and faced further prosecution for medical malpractice when he worked aboard U.S. shipping lines in the early 1930s. In 1933, he took the stand as a medical expert in New York federal court only to be humiliated by defense attorneys who were aware of his medical malpractice.

Soon after that, Von Baumann re-invented himself as “Cyril Von Baumann, noted explorer”. During March of 1936 and March of 1937 he undertook two excursions in Ecuador and made up incredible tales of his mundane journeys such as finding a 60 foot snake! However, despite his best efforts, he failed to integrate himself into the diplomatic world of South American relations. Baumann told US authorities that he had the power to broker the sale of the Galapagos Islands and part of Ecuador’s oil resources. After US diplomats completed an investigation on his overseas affairs, they found him to be a fraud and an imposter and wanted nothing to do with him.

Von Baumann was married three times. He first married in 1924 and moved in with his in-laws but after six months of living off of them, he was asked to move out and get a job. Devising his lies as a doctor, Von Baumann and his wife settled into their own home and had two children, but before his lies were exposed, he disappeared, abandoning his wife and children. A year later, his wife found out of her husband’s whereabouts when she heard a radio broadcast about his upcoming exploration and marriage to a 25 year old woman from Texas!

After Von Baumann, took off from his second wife, he moved to Hollywood so he could publish a tell-all book. In late 1935, he rented 2175 Fairfield Avenue and gave an interview to a Los Angeles newspaper claiming he felt lonelier than being in a deepest jungle but moved to Los Angeles in order to write a book about his South American explorations. Von Baumann told the reporter that he would retell his stories of “hunting lions in Ethiopia”, “fighting pirates in the Yangtze” and “seeking buried treasure of the Incas”, “saving lives as sea” and “safari riding in the Tibet”.

During this time, 27 year old Hilda d’Olivier, a German housekeeper from Beverly Hills disappeared and had been missing since December 17, 1935. After an uneventful search in nearby parks, Beverly Hills police feared she may have ended her life. Ironically, she had mailed a farewell note to ‘acquaintance” Cyril Von Baumann at 2175 Fairfield Avenue. How did the depressed maid know the fraudulent explorer?

The note indicated that she had been miserable for the past five years since moving to the United States from Germany. One the day of her disappearance, d’Olivier also left a note at her employer’s home in Beverly Hills asking her employer to donate her clothing to a charity. The employers found all of her paperwork, including her passport, burned. Missing from her belongings was a package of razor blades. There was no other mention in the newspaper whether she was ever located. Von Baumann rented the house until February 1936 and just like that, he was gone.

Von Baumann continued to travel the country with his lies and even married once more. During the 1940s, he produced a series of radio shows related to his fake explorations. He also designed illustrations for several children’s books and co-authored a cookbook entitled “The Four Winds Cookbook: the Best Recipes Around the World”. The cookbook was published in 1954 after his death in 1953. The question is, where these recipes real or did he make them up?

Architect Eugene Steinhof moved into 2175 Fairfield Avenue until he listed the house for sale by owner in 1955. The house was listed as two-stories with walking distance to the Hollywood Bowl, with 2 bedrooms and 1 1/4 bathrooms. The listing was not listed under houses to be moved so it must have survived the Hollywood Freeway construction. However, with no permit to either move or demolish the property, it was most likely a casualty during the 1960s when the city was planning to build a movie museum across the street from the Hollywood Bowl. When the plans for the museum fell through, the vacant land was made into a parking lot for the Hollywood Bowl.