Wrong turn at Pickfair Way ? - The Pickfair Estate Beverly Hills

Al and Catherine on vacation in "Hollywood" Feb - 1946

Pickfair - Home of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford - 1920

For a brief moment in the summer of 1979 I sold maps to stars homes in front of the old Famous Amos Cookie establishment on Sunset Blvd. This chapter in my life lasted about three days as it was much too hot to be standing out on the sizzling concrete selling maps to tourists searching out the homes of Milton Berle, Eve Arden and Shirley Temple. As the now famous (in my blog anyway) 42 Sunset bus would pass by every 20 minutes, I would envy my dear friend Johnny “Mac” as he made his way to Santa Monica Beach for a little surf, sun and girl chasing. On what was to be my last day selling these maps, a vacationing couple from Small Town USA purchased a map and went happily on their way, only to return a couple hours later outraged that the map that I had sold them did not have the correct address for Carl Reiner, the multi-talented actor/producer/director and creator of the Dick Van Dyke Show. I quit this gig about an hour later and headed to the soft sands of Santa Monica never looking back at star chasers again.

I recently raided the vacation photo album of tourists Al and Catherine as they toured Hollywood in February of 1946. Among the many great snapshots of the sharply dressed couple and their friends in front of all the "greatest hits" of that time period; The Brown Derby, The Chinese Theater and CBS Studios, there was an odd photo of them in front of a grassy front yard at 1148 Pickfair Way. I can only assume they were searching out the famous Pickfair Estate of silent film stars Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford located at 1143 Summit Drive, just around the corner from where they were so proudly posing for the camera. Al and Catherine were probably led astray by an outdated map much like that frustrated couple I encountered back in 1979. Built by famed California Architect Charles Neff and purchased by Douglas Fairbanks in 1919, Pickfair (an amalgamation of the names of its original residents Fairbanks and Pickford) was the fairytale home of the Hollywood couple until they divorced in 1936. Over the decades the estate was slowly reduced in acreage and eventually sold to Los Angeles Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss and then again to actress and singer Pia Zadora who had it bulldozed to erect the monstrosity that sits their today. Only the pool and the front gate remain from the glamorous original estate.

The Famous Amos store on Sunset Blvd is long gone today, but the vending machine at my work still sells the Famous Amos cookie brand, while I am again working on maps at my job but in a much different capacity. Mary Pickford continued to live at the Pickfair Estate until she passed away that same summer of 1979 leaving her third husband Buddy Rodgers and eventually Dr. Jerry Buss to deal with the hundreds of quirky vacationing couples that would arrive every summer at the famous estate searching out a photo opportunity. Back at home, Al and Catherine’s friends and family were none the wiser of the Pickfair geographical error made that day, as they enviously flipped through that 1946 vacation photo album of their trip to La-La Land.