Whitley Heights 101

2201 Fairfield Avenue

2201 Fairfield Avenue was a 6 room duplex built in 1915 by owner Edward Delaney who hired architect Henry Hayward to design the building. Unfortunately, Delaney passed away a year later at the age of 39 from tuberculosis. During the 1930s, a screen porch was added to the rear of the property. In 1952, the duplex was moved to 6723-25 10th Avenue, close to Inglewood Park Cemetery, where it remains today.

2201 Fairfield Avenue was one of the first residences built in Whitley Heights and was located at the northeast corner of Fairfield Avenue and Odin Street. Before the duplex was relocated to avoid demolition from the 101 Freeway in the 1950s, several notable Hollywood film industry men resided here.

Oakwood Avenue was established in 1906 and was renamed to Fairfield Avenue prior to 1915 when the duplex was built. The duplex also used the address of 6655 Odin Street and was primarily used as a rental property. In 1916, silent screen actor Victor Potel (1889-1947) rented one of the units when he first moved to Hollywood. Potel made his first silent film in 1910, a comedy short filmed in Chicago by Essanay Film Manufacturing Company called “A Dog on Business”. Potel continued to make films for Essanay, appearing in dozens of films every year, including most of the Broncho Billy series, and played a character called “Slippery Slim” in 80 movies.

He also appeared in Universal Pictures’ “Snakeville” series. He was credited in over 450 films up until his death in 1947. Potel’s first talking picture was Melody of Love, starring Walter Pidgeon, made for Universal in 1928, and in the sound era he continued to work continuously and constantly, playing small parts and sometimes uncredited bit parts, all primarily comic roles due to his height (6.1 feet tall) and gawkiness. Below, left to right: director Edward F. Cline (with script), Victor Potel, Gale Henry, Tully Marshall, Viola Dana, and cinematographer John Arnold on the set of “Along Came Ruth” in 1924.

Potel met his wife, Mildred Pam, when she visited the set of a Snakeville comedy he was making at Essanay Studios in Niles, California, in 1914. Her father, Leopold Pam, was a theater manager, whom she was accompanying the day she met Potel. After a whirlwind courtship, Victor and Mildred were married in San Francisco that same year and remained married until his death in 1947.

In 1931, motion picture director Benjamin Christensen resided at 2201 Fairfield Avenue. Christensen (1879-1959) was a Danish film director, screenwriter and an actor, both in film and on the stage. As a director, he was best known for his 1922 film “Haxan” aka  (Witchcraft Through the Ages). His most memorable and acclaimed acting performance was in the film “Michael”(1924), where he played Claude Zoret, the male lover of the film’s title character. Christensen worked for MGM for several years directing Lon Chaney in “Mockery”, Thelma Todd in both “The Haunted House” and “Seven Footprints to Satan”, and Lionel Barrymore in “The Mysterious Island”. By 1931, Christensen had enough to Hollywood and returned to his native country where he continued to direct films.

Between 1938 to 1942, actor Edward Van Sloan rented 2201 Fairfield Avenue. Van Sloan (1882-1964) was an American character actor best remembered for his roles in the Universal Studios horror films such as Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), and The Mummy (1932). In the first of these, he played Professor Van Helsing, the famous vampire-hunter, a role he had first taken in the successful touring production of Dracula by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston. He played essentially the same role, this time as Dr. Muller, an occultist, in The Mummy. He again played Van Helsing in the 1936 film Dracula’s Daughter. In Frankenstein, he played the character of Dr. Waldman, and he also stepped in front of a curtain before the film’s opening credits to warn audience members that they now had a chance to escape the theatre if they were too squeamish to endure the film.

By 1942, Van Sloan’s career was still strong, he purchased a Whitley Heights house located at 2014 Grace Avenue where he resided until selling it two years later.

2201 Fairfield Avenue continued to be rented out until 1952 when it was auctioned off by the state of California. Before the 101 Freeway was built, this location was an ideal place to hear music just across the street from the Hollywood Bowl and run into actor J. Warren Kerrigan who resided around the corner of Cahuenga Boulevard. In the early 1920s, actress Ethel Clayton lived across the street in a little bungalow.