El Cabrillo - Ties To Hollywood Film Business

Ties To Hollywood Film Business

The El Cabrillo apartments have a long association with the movie business. In 2007, the Hollywood Reporter described El Cabrillo as a building "steeped in old Hollywood lore," and in 2004, The New York Times called the El Cabrillo "a two-story complex that has more fabled than factual stories attached to it, the mark of a true Hollywood star."

The building was built by Cecil B. DeMille in 1928. David Wallace, the author of Lost Hollywood (St. Martin's Press, 2001), believes DeMille built El Cabrillo to house New York stage actors whom he brought to Los Angeles when talking pictures arrived. Others claim that DeMille intended it as a gift for his daughter Frances. Whichever version is correct, DeMille was responsible for a building that became one of the most fashionable addresses in Hollywood. The building's notable features include its Spanish-style courtyard and fountain, hand-made tiles, large fireplaces, and high-beamed ceilings. According to The New York Times, DeMille used set craftsmen to construct "the phantasmagorial sense of architectural detail at El Cabrillo, which includes a central outdoor Moorish fountain, timbered ceilings, Catalina tile work, swashbuckling wrought-iron hardware and scaled-down versions of Citizen Kane-like carved concrete fireplaces in each apartment." David Wallace, who once managed the property, said: "It's like walking into a movie."

Actress Ann Harding leased one of the front apartments in 1928 for $500 per month—a very high rental rate at the time. Other notable residents have included director Lowell Sherman, Perc Westmore, and writer John Willard. Also, the building's Spanish revival courtyard is alleged to have been used as a set in a Rudolph Valentino movie. Located close to DeMille's motion picture studio, El Cabrillo is at the foot of Whitley Heights, where Charles Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino lived in the 1920s.

More recently, transvestite actor Divine lived in the complex in the 1960s, as did Kent Warner, a costumer and noted collector of clothing and props from Hollywood films. After Warner died in 1984, the building's owner cleaned out the basement and inadvertently threw out some of Warner's possessions, including James Dean's boots from Rebel Without a Cause and Marlon Brando's leather jacket from The Wild One.