Sunday, February 10, 2008

Black Gold, Texas Tea


 The post on Jan 31st where we discovered the Beverly Hillbillies home at 750 Bel Air Road in Los Angeles made me start poking around for more information and photographs of the mansion.

One of the first things I noticed was that there seemed to be a lack of parking - the 3 or 4 cars shown in the top picture appeared to be at the house staff entrance.
 But when the aerial view is turned around to look at the mansion from a different angle, it quickly becomes apparent that the garden at the bottom of the second picture is actually the roof of a parking garage! On top of that, we can begin to see a second massive garage built into the hillside at the top end of the second picture. Apparently, there is parking a-plenty.
 Turning 180 degrees once again and zooming in on this hillside parking garage, we can also see that there is a small building - staff residence? - on the edge of the parking facility.
Just how much has this residence changed when it was remodeled in the 1990s?

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Here are two tourist photos I found that were taken before the home was remodeled.

 When you compare that to the video frame taken from the actual show (see the Chrysler Imperial going in the gate?), they all match - except that the video frame shows a see-through wrought iron gate
 But the TV show did take liberties, as this second frame shows - that is not the gateway to 750 Bel Air Road, nor is that the Hillbillies mansion in the background (see the windows in the roof?).
It appears that the remodel did get rid of a guard shack that was by the entrance, though. That shack can be see in a video at http://www.imperialclub.com/Movies/Beverly/index.htm to the left of the entrance gate, or looking at it from the other direction, it can be seen to the right of the entrance in the second of the two tourist photos above. Comparing it to the Zillow aerial photo at the end of this post, it is obvious that the guard building no longer exists.

One other thing: My Jan 31st post said that the mansion was built for Arnold Kirkeby. That is not true - the mansion was built by Lynn Atkinson for his wife. When he showed his wife the completed mansion, she didn't like it and refused to move in. Mr. Atkinson then sold it to Arnold Kirkeby for a fraction of what it cost to build.

Personally, Mrs. Atkinson, I have never liked the house either. The front always looked like cinderblock on the TV show (though I know it's not), and I find the shape rather boring.
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2 comments:

  1. sandyFebruary 10, 2008 at 8:04 PM

    Always an interesting tour coming here. You should do this for a living. I enjoyed it.

    Thanks.

    s

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  2. AmericanWay62March 4, 2016 at 7:09 PM

    The picture with the house with a mansard roof ("windows in the roof", a French style, look it up) ahead and to the left of the car entering the gate is actually Mr. Drysdale's mansion at 333 Copa de Oro Road.

    It is actually about 3 turns and 6 mansions downhill and south from the Clampett's Kirkeby Mansion. In the feud episode in the first season, they show them walking uphill at one point, long guns drawn, away from the actual location of the Drysdale house.

    Elly Mae is the look out in a tree, I believe it's the one on the left end of the familiar facade as we face it, which is actually the back of the house. She is looking out and to her right, which would be uphill and north, in the same direction the clan was marching earlier and later, and again away from the Drysdale's actual location. In keeping with the show's false sense of direction, Elly says "They took pa up to the Drysdale's house."

    Upon further review, I can still see the grassy hillside rising from the road on the clan's left as they walk uphill, up Bellagio Road on their way to the Drysdale's, which sits on Bellagio Road where it meets Copa de Oro

    This is really cool to use Google Maps to look at the actual houses they used for exterior shots and to use the tilt feature to see how they, particularly the Kirkeby Mansion, sit on the hill above UCLA, Wilshire Blvd. and Sunset Blvd.

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