(This article was published in California Homes '04 magazine) Seeking a breezy getaway from their Sunset Boulevard mansion, silent film star Norma Shearer and producer Irving Thalberg built a beach house near the Santa Monica pier in 1931. Though it paled in comparison to the massive $7 million oceanfront home William Randolph Hearst had recently erected for longtime mistress Marion Davies, the two-story Tudor courtyard house was no shabby affair. Shearer had envisioned it both as a party pad for Hollywood luminaries and as a retreat for Thalberg, whose frail health had plagued him since childhood. Despite the abundant sea breeze, Shearer had the entire residence air-conditioned and even took pains to soundproof it for her husband, a very light sleeper, from the din of the surf. Thalberg died of pneumonia in 1936 and Shearer later sold the place. Like most longstanding Southern California homes, it passed through a series of owners during the ensuing years, including Barron Hilton. By the time the current owners bought the house in 1998, it bore a hodgepodge of alterations-and the aluminum sliding glass doors just didn’t suit the Tudor look. Major renovation was in order. The new buyers, a prominent Los Angeles attorney and his wife, considered bulldozing the place and starting from scratch, but when they hired estate architect Richard Landry for the project, he talked them into keeping the existing structure and brought builder Gordon Gibson on board to handle the remodel. Calling this massive job a mere remodel is like calling the Trump Tower a multi-family dwelling. “We stripped the house down to the studs,” says Landry. Gibson sank fifteen steel and concrete caissons to help meet current earthquake codes, and the old floor plan, with its low ceilings and dusky paces, was scrapped in favor of one featuring more light and less noise. Sunset rays now streak through the vaulting two-story living room, while the front courtyard is shielded from Pacific Coast Highway by an extension of the house placed at right angle to the rest of the structure. The project took fourteen months, about the same amount of time as building a custom home from scratch. “Everything is new in the house-mechanical, plumbing, heating, electrical, roof,” Gibson says. Plus, “There’s a stream running underneath the house. When we excavated the pool, we had this river that was running through it.” Aesthetically, the goal was to update the house with a warm, modern Swedish look. Landry enlivened the outer facades with balconies and trim of Douglas fir and brought a soft yellow cast to the stucco walls. A mottled flagstone lines the big rear patio and the lip of the new pool. “Many times your Tudor is dark wood brown wood with white plaster,” says Landry. “We wanted it to feel more like the beach, to be fresher.” The house, which now has seven bedrooms and measures 10,000 square feet, has his-and-her offices-his is on the floor where the attic once was, while hers overlooks the two-story living room. The master bedroom, with its pitched pine ceiling and its view of the sand, lies above the family room: beside it is the gym. Most of the floors are pine, except for the kitchen and family room, which sport a fetching pattern of pine strips and terra cotta pavers. Interior designer Karen Blake laid down a palette of light, creamy tones and punctuated it with the bucolic texture of distressed woods. The owners “wanted it really to feel like a Swedish house-floors, the old beams,” she says. True the home’s Hollywood roots, one hallmark of the original residence was carefully honored. In the living room, a seven-foot projection screen-the same one which Shearer and Thalberg watched the first talkies-rises from the floor on command. “It’s been refurbished,” says Landry Design Group architect Brian Pinkett, the associate in charge of the project. “They hit one button and the whole thing comes up automatically.” Like so many movies, the renovation has a happy ending. The owners “are more than overjoyed,” says Gibson. “They love every minute of it.” Publications : 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8