Calling all Beatles fans! George Harrison’s childhood home has just been turned into an Airbnb. You can read all about it in my latest post for Dirt.
Kirk Douglas’ House from “Diamonds Are Forever”
Calling all James Bond fans! My latest post is about Kirk Douglas’ former Palm Springs residence which made a memorable appearance as Tiffany Case’s (Jill St. John) house in Diamonds Are Forever.
Byrdview, Frank Sinatra’s Former House
Be sure to check out my latest post for Dirt. It’s about Byrdview, an oft-filmed Chatsworth estate said to have been occupied by crooner Frank Sinatra for over a decade!
Alexander Hamilton’s Former House
“Hamilton” fans – be sure to check out my latest post! It’s about The Grange, aka the country house that once belonged to Founding Father Alexander Hamilton.
The Real “Goldbergs” House
Head over to Dirt to read my latest post about Adam F. Goldberg’s real childhood home.
Britney Spears’ Childhood Home
Head over to Dirt to read all about Britney Spears’ childhood home in Kentwood, Louisiana, which her dad just sold last week.
Natalie Wood’s Childhood Home
Head over to Dirt to read all about the West Hollywood bungalow Natalie Wood called home as a child!
JFK and Jackie’s Former Georgetown Homes
Considering how much I love history, I know shockingly little about former President John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline. So I was thrilled when the Grim Cheaper gifted me with Jackie, Janet & Lee: The Secret Lives of Janet Auchincloss and Her Daughters Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Lee Radziwill last Christmas. The 2018 biography and its depiction of the women’s intensely complicated relationships with each other as well as with their significant others was fascinating all the way through. And it even reminded me of two residences related to the former First Lady that I stalked during my visit to Washington, D.C. in September 2016. I learned about the homes thanks to my friend Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, who just prior to my trip emailed me a list of area attractions he had compiled. Even though I was not well-versed in anything pertaining to Jackie O at the time, I decided to add the addresses to my stalking itinerary which turned out to be quite foresightful.
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Upon returning home from World War II, John Fitzgerald “Jack” Kennedy worked for a brief time as a foreign correspondent for Hearst Newspapers prior to embarking on his political career which brought him to Washington D.C. After landing a seat in the House of Representatives in 1946, he moved around to a couple of different Georgetown properties until ultimately leasing a picturesque pad at 3260 N Street NW in 1951.
He would remain there for the next two years.
It proved an eventful time in young Jack’s life. During his tenure at the 5-bedroom, 2.5-bath, 2,220-square-foot dwelling, not only did he meet his future wife, Jacqueline Bouvier, who was then working at the Washington Times-Herald, but he also won his 1952 Senate seat.
Jack proposed to Jackie in June 1953 (supposedly at neighborhood favorite Martin’s Tavern, which I blogged about here) and vacated the N Street house that same year. After dotting around to different residences, the newlyweds settled into an estate in McLean Virginia known as Hickory Hill. The sprawling property soon proved too large for the fledgling couple, though, and they sold it to Robert F. Kennedy in 1956 before heading back to Georgetown, eventually moving into a mansion at 3307 N Street NW, just one block over from their old house.
Standing at four stories, the handsome Federal-style residence, built in 1811, boasts 4 bedrooms, 4 baths, and over 4,000 square feet of living space. Along with JFK and Jackie lived the couple’s daughter, Caroline, and their nurse, cook, butler, and maid.
The family’s time at 3307 also proved eventful. While there, JFK announced his candidacy for president, ran a successful campaign, was elected to office, and, on November 25th, 1960, celebrated the birth of son John F. Kennedy Jr.
It was also from the stately pad that Jack and Jackie left for the inauguration on the snowy morning of January 20th, 1961, at which time they moved into their most famous home, the White House.
Countless pictures were taken of the Kennedys outside of 3307 N Street during their years there, including this one snapped by JFK’s official campaign photographer Jacques Lowe. Jack was also often documented addressing the press right from the front door. As Thomas Wolfe wrote in a 1960 Washington Post article, “Our next president doesn’t take the old, easy way of making his announcements about new cabinet ministers, the fate of the new frontier, etc., from his office on Capitol Hill — where, if one need edit, the corridors have steam heat. He just steps right out on the old front porch at 3307 N St. NW and starts talking. And disappears back into the manse.” Seeing the brief happy moments captured at the residence is jarring considering the tragedy that will befall the family in such a short time and the eerie realization they bring that the man standing front and center is gone while the house remains virtually untouched.
After the assassination in 1963, Jackie returned to Georgetown, first moving into the home of a friend and then, in February 1964, to a Colonial dwelling just a few blocks east of her previous residence at 3017 N Street NW with her sister, Lee. (I failed to stalk that particular location while in D.C., but an MLS photo featured on Zillow is pictured below.) The 12-room manse was selected by Radziwill and, per Jackie, Janet & Lee, of the choice, designer Billy Baldwin said, “It had been chosen for Jackie with the greatest possible bad decision by her sister. I think the home was designed by someone for purposes of publicity. There was no hope for privacy, it was out in the open, high atop a mountain of steps. When I saw it, it looked like a monument. I thought, ‘Why, Lee, why? Why?’” As predicted, the place did quickly become an attraction for lookie-loos, with tour buses stopping by throughout the day and people camping out on the sidewalk in front hoping for a glimpse of the resplendent Jackie. Needless to say, she didn’t last long there. In July 1964, she took her two children and moved to a spacious apartment at 1040 Fifth Avenue in New York.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Big THANK YOU to my friend Owen, from the When Write Is Wrong blog, for telling me about these locations! 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: From 1951 to 1953, while serving in Congress, John F. Kennedy lived at 3260 N Street NW in Georgetown. In 1958, JFK and Jackie settled into a pad one block over at 3307 N Street NW where they remained until moving into the White House in January 1961. The property Jackie briefly called home following the president’s assassination is about four blocks east at 3017 N Street NW. Martin’s Tavern, where JFK is said to have proposed to Jackie, is located nearby at 1264 Wisconsin Avenue.
Boris Karloff’s Former Home
The Haunting of Hill House is giving me life right now! To say I am obsessed with the spooky new Netflix original series would be an understatement. I am currently only five episodes in (so no spoilers please!), but am absolutely mesmerized by the storyline, the characters, the actors (it is amazing how much the child stars resemble their adult counterparts!), and the locations. Sadly, it was filmed in Georgia (the eponymous house is actually Bisham Manor in LaGrange), so I won’t be stalking its locales anytime soon, but when I brought the show up to my grandma recently, she mentioned that the most frightening movie she had ever seen was the original Frankenstein, starring Boris Karloff as The Monster. She first watched the 1931 classic as a child and said it absolutely terrified her and still does to this day. The conversation reminded me that I had stalked Karloff’s former residence a few years back, but had failed to blog about it. I learned about the pad thanks to my friend Scott Michaels’ 2013 article for Discover L.A. titled “The 13 Scariest Places in Los Angeles,” in which he wrote, “Frankenstein’s monster thespian Boris Karloff was a gentleman who had a passion for gardening. He was especially proud of his rose garden. Legend has it that several of Karloff’s friends willed their cremains to him, so they could permanently reside in his rose bed.” So the actor who played what is arguably moviedom’s most famous monster supposedly buried the ashes of multiple friends in his yard? There couldn’t be a more appropriate locale for my Haunted Hollywood posts! I honestly don’t know how the place sat in my stalking backlog for so long. Thank you, Grandma, for reminding me about it!
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Though I was most interested in the 1927 Spanish-style hacienda thanks to its Karloff connection, it turns out that the property’s macabre history dates back prior to his ownership. In July 1923, the place was leased by Katharine Hepburn, who had just won a role in A Bill of Divorcement which prompted a move from the East Coast to the West. Per the book Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites, written by my buddy E.J. from The Movieland Directory, she lived in the dwelling with best friend, actress Eve March, and a family maid. All soon became convinced the pad, most notably the pool apartment, was haunted. E.J. writes, “One night March watched the door latch open and close by itself, and the next day Hepburn and March watched a ghostly man walk from the pool into the apartment, closing the door behind him. The first time Hepburn’s younger brother Richard stayed overnight, he told her that a young man stood over his bed all night staring down at him. He was too afraid to move until sunrise.” Because of the hauntings, Katharine did not stay on the premises long, moving out in 1934 at which point Karloff (real name William Henry Pratt) moved in with his wife, Dorothy.
The property quickly became his paradise. During his tenure, Boris kept a menagerie of animals on the grounds including a tortoise, ducks, chickens, six dogs, a cow, a parrot, and a 400-pound pig named Violet. In the book Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: The Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration, author Gregory William Mank says, “For Karloff, home was his Mexican farmhouse — a bizarre aerie, high amidst the oak trees and honeysuckle of Coldwater Canyon, in the mountains above Beverly Hills. Twenty-three twenty Bowmont Drive, with its pool and beautiful, rambling gardens, previously had been the address of Katharine Hepburn. The actress sincerely believed a ghost haunted the house, moving the furniture, jiggling the latch on Ms. Hepburn’s bedroom door and looming over the guest bed — so terrifying Hepburn’s brother Richard that he couldn’t sleep ‘one single night’ during his visit. After Kate’s friend Laura Harding tried to have her dogs ferret out the ghost — to no avail — Hepburn vacated, and Boris and Dorothy had moved into the haunted hacienda in the spring of 1934. ‘We felt rather sorry for the ghost,’ said Laura Harding — after all, the spirit had likely met its match in the star who’d played Frankenstein’s Monster! Perhaps Boris scared away the ghost, or maybe they were kindred spirits, for the star loved his ‘little farm.’”
Indeed he did. Dorothy and Boris created an oasis at the home, which at the time boasted a sprawling 2.5 acres of land, planting laurel and eucalyptus trees (which still line the property to this day), farming a massive fruit orchard, landscaping a rambling lawn, and cultivating a plethora of terraced gardens including a large rose garden with more than 20 varieties of the flower. It is there that Karloff is said to have sprinkled the remains of more than one friend, which I can presume only added to the hauntings. As Mank relayed to the Los Angeles Times in 1995, Boris buried “under the roses the cremated remains of old stock-company cronies whose last wish was to rest in their now-famous friend’s Eden.” A supremely bizarre request, especially considering the actor’s horror background, but I guess the heart wants what the heart wants.
Karloff lived on the premises until his divorce from Dorothy in 1946. The majority of the land surrounding the hacienda was subsequently subdivided, leaving behind a much smaller 0.95-acre lot. Today, the pad boasts 5 bedrooms, 6 baths, 4,984 square feet, white-washed masonry walls, tile and hardwood flooring throughout, beamed ceilings, multiple patios and courtyards, a whopping SIX fireplaces including one outside, an exterior pizza oven, a chef’s kitchen, a pool, maid’s quarters, a wine cellar, a bar, a library, a tiled staircase, a den, and a sun room. The residence, which you can see photos of here, is absolutely exquisite! It very closely resembles the La Quinta Resort & Club, at least how the hotel looked prior to its recent (and unfortunate) remodel. Sadly, outside of the front gate and garage (pictured below via Google Street View), virtually none of the estate is visible from the road. (Because the latter is situated quite a distance up from the former, I did not realize it was part of the Karloff residence when I was stalking the place and failed to snap photos of it.)
As I’ve said before, though, that’s why God created aerial views.
Several other stars have called the Bowmont pad home over the years, including rocker Eric Burdon, who also reportedly moved out due to the hauntings, and director Gottfried Reinhardt. Per The Movieland Directory, producer Leland Hayward and his wife, actress Margaret Sullavan, lived on the premises at one point, as well. But the home’s storied pedigree doesn’t end there! Realtor Elaine Young told People magazine in 1991 that the property, which she was responsible for leasing out during the many years it belonged to Producers Studio head Fred Jordan, has a “quasi-demonic history.” LOVE IT. Young says, “Donovan [Leitch] leased it and did something to the toilet paper rack. Elliott Gould leased it and threw the furniture in the pool. Everybody did something.” Jordon sold to Frasier actress Peri Gilpin in 2003 who subsequently sold to Friends writers/producers Scott Silveri and Shana Goldberg-Meehan in 2007. Per Yolanda’s Little Black Book, the abode is currently owned by producer John Goldwyn and his husband Jeffrey Klein, who bought it for $7.3 million in 2015. Despite the multiple changes of hand, the dwelling apparently remains largely in its original state because in Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, Mank writes, “ . . . a recent owner relates that a late-in-life Katharine Hepburn (who died in 2003) suddenly appeared one day without warning, mysteriously dressed in black and inspecting the house and grounds. ‘Well,’ said Hepburn to the owner, ‘I’m glad to see you haven’t f*cked the place up!’”
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Big THANK YOU to Scott Michaels, of the Find A Death website, for writing about this location and to my Grandma for reminding me of it! 
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Boris Karloff’s former house is located at 2320 Bowmont Drive in Beverly Crest.
Ray Raymond and Dorothy MacKaye’s Former House
I have been told that I am ridiculously easy to buy presents for. Anything pink or sparkly, dainty and gold, or having to do with Los Angeles automatically fits the bill. Some gifts are so perfectly suited to me when it comes to the latter category, in fact, that I have received them on multiple occasions. Case in point – The Mammoth Book of Hollywood Scandals, a 514-page tome dedicated to Tinseltown’s most famous crimes, which my mom originally bought me for Christmas in 2013. When the Grim Cheaper came across the publication a few years later while perusing the stacks at our local Barnes & Noble, he snatched it right up and gave it to me the following Christmas, not realizing that my mom had already done so. Both copies remain on my bookshelf today, heavily highlighted, dog-eared and annotated. Chapter 5, titled “The ‘Almost Perfect’ Murder,” about the 1927 killing of Ray Raymond at the hands of his wife’s lover, especially piqued my interest. Prior to reading it, I had never heard of the actor or his homicide, but I devoured the story in minutes, promptly added the address of his former home to my To-Stalk List, and finally made it out there last month while prepping for my Haunted Hollywood posts.
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Ray Raymond was born in San Francisco in 1887. Described as a “song and dance man,” he found success on the vaudeville circuit early in life. While acting in a play in New York in 1921, Ray’s eye was caught by his much younger leading lady, Dorothy ‘Dot’ MacKaye (also sometimes written as “Mackaye”), and, despite a 12-year age gap – he was 34, she was 22 – and the fact that he was already married, he quickly took up with her, ditching his wife in the process. Ray and Dot reportedly wedded that August (though it has been claimed the two never actually tied the knot) and a baby girl the couple named Valerie was born the following year. In 1926, the family of three moved to Los Angeles, eventually settling into a small bungalow located at 2261 Cheremoya Avenue in the Hollywood Hills.
Their 3-bedroom, 2-bath, 1,622-square-foot home, which was originally built in 1922, still stands today boasting a 0.16-acre lot and a detached 2-car garage, which is just visible in the images below.
The quaint dwelling, largely hidden from the road, was not the site of many happy times for Ray and Dot. Not only did Ray reportedly have a major drinking problem, but he spent most of his time touring the country playing vaudeville shows. And Dot . . . well, Dot was in love with someone else.
During Raymond’s time away, MacKaye rekindled her longtime friendship with so-called “tough guy” actor Paul Kelly, whom she had met as a teenager while acting in a play in New York. Born in 1899, Kelly was a true child star having appeared in more than 55 movies before he even turned 18. The red-haired looker moved to Los Angeles around the same time as Dot and Ray and settled into an apartment conveniently located right around the corner from their home at 2420 North Gower Street. It was not long before the two were engaged in a torrid affair, of which neither took great pains to hide. As Dot’s maid later testified, when Raymond was touring, the young mom often did not come home at night, instead choosing to stay over at Paul’s. Newspapers of the day also reported that the couple regularly asked Kelly’s “Japanese houseboy” Jungle to serve them meals and gin fizzes, their apparent drink of choice, in bed.
Ray returned from touring in mid-April 1927 distraught over the affair. He confronted Dot about it and she did little to deny things. Ray also mentioned his wife’s indiscretion to friends, which apparently set Paul over the edge. On the evening of April 16th, under the pretense of going out to buy Easter eggs (I’m not making that up), Dot headed to Paul’s place where the two got drunk on gin fizzes (natch). She told her lover that Ray had been spilling the tea to his buddies and Paul, inexplicably enraged, called Ray to confront him. Raymond suggested that Kelly come to the Cheremoya house to talk in person and, at around 7:30 p.m., Paul headed over. Upon arriving, Ray demanded to know where Dot was. An argument ensued and things rather quickly turned physical, but the 5’7”, 135-pound Raymond was no match for the 6’, 180-pound Kelly, who was 12 years his junior. Paul pummeled Ray, punching him six times in the head and the actor collapsed to the floor. Ray’s housekeeper and daughter witnessed the entire altercation.
Though Ray appeared to be OK in the hours following the fight, he fell into a coma the next day. Dot, hoping to avoid publicity and questioning from authorities, called in a favor from a doctor who was a personal friend and her husband was quietly transported to Queen of Angels Hospital (now Dream Center) at 2301 Bellevue Avenue in Echo Park. The damage had been done, though. Raymond passed away at 5:20 a.m. on April 19th. After being slipped $500, Dot’s doctor friend signed off on the death certificate, claiming “natural causes.” Someone at the hospital smelled a rat, though, and notified the newspapers that an actor who was badly beaten had died. Police were contacted and an autopsy was ordered. Ray, it was found, had actually died from brain hemorrhaging caused by the beating. Paul and Dot were arrested.
Their trials were reportedly the most attended in California history up until that time. Kelly wound up being convicted of manslaughter and was sentenced to one to ten years at San Quentin. He served two and was released on August 2nd, 1929. Dot was convicted of compounding a felony and was sentenced to one to three years, also at San Quentin. She was released after ten months. The two, of course, found their way back to each other and were married in February 1931. Hollywood inexplicably embraced the duo despite the murder. As Paul Drexler stated in a 2018 San Francisco Examiner article about the case, “Killing someone is not generally considered a good career move. It is frowned on in the bible and there is no mention of this technique in any of the books of Dale Carnegie, Stephen Covey, or Tony Robbins. For Paul Kelly, however, this act secured a long and successful acting career.” Kelly indeed made a huge comeback, starring in hundreds of films post-release. He even won a Tony award in 1948! Dot also walked away from the affair fairly unscathed, penning a play based upon her experience behind bars titled Women in Prison, which was later made into the 1933 movie Ladies They Talk About starring Barbara Stanwyck. The couple’s wedded bliss did end up to be rather short-lived, though. On the evening of January 2nd, 1940, Dot was involved in a car accident and, in an eerie echo of Ray’s death, while she appeared fine in the hours following, she passed away from internal injuries three days later. Kelly, who later remarried, died of a heart attack at the age of 57 in 1956. That karma never forgets! Ray and Dorothy’s marital home is the only element of the whole sordid tale that seems to have fared well in the end. Per Zillow, the tiny bungalow is currently worth a whopping $1.58 million!
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking! 
Stalk It: Ray Raymond and Dorothy MacKaye’s former home is located at 2261 Cheremoya Avenue in the Hollywood Hills.