Customer Reviews

Movie Star Homes: The Famous to the Forgotten

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you love Hollywood, architecture or are just curious about what kind of homes the movie stars live in, you will find this book fascinating. It includes over 350 entries - from silent greats (Garbo, Valentino) to modern day stars (Brad Pitt & Jennifer Anniston) - although the majority of the entries are the classic stars of yester-year. Each entry includes the address, a brief sentence or two about their career and fame followed by a paragraph about the house itself and a black and white photo. The photos are usually good although there are some that are very small and others in which you can only see a fence or a driveway. The captions note that some of the stars only lived in the houses for a few years. You might be surprised at how modest a lot of the homes are! An appendix gives "movie star homes by region" and "theme tours." If you are taking a trip to Hollywood, you will definately want to take this book with you, and it is a fun book to browse even if you are not going there.

This is a very good book. I enjoyed all of the photos and interesting information about many different movie stars throughout different time periods. Overall this is a great book that is very fun to read.

This is a good guide to over 350 homes of Hollywood stars. The book orders the homes by the last name of the star, then includes the address of the home, a paragraph about the star and a paragraph about when the star lived in the home. There are small pictures of the star and the home.

The book focuses a lot on really old movie stars, including many from the silent era. The few contemporary stars in the book rarely have their current homes listed--it may be an apartment they stayed in 20 years ago or a first home they purchased before they made it big.

A map would also help. For those not familiar with L.A., we have no idea where these houses are in relation to anything else.

Compared to other guides that are out, this is a pretty good book but dated. Don't get it if you are trying to find a bunch of modern houses of stars. For movie historians only.

If you want glossy pictures, this is not for you. If you want short background information and black and white, this book is for you. I was disappointed because of the size, but I did enjoy the short reads.

As soon as I started leafing through this book I was apalled by its inaccuracies and omissions. For example William Holden: No mention is made of the apartment building on Ocean Ave in Santa Monica which he owned and where he died. No mention is made of Jimmy Stewarts home at 918 Roxbury Drive where he and his wife Gloria lived for 45 years until his death in 1989. Elizabeth Taylor is cited as living at Nancy Sinatra (the mother's) former home at 700 Nimes Road in Bel Air. The Sinatra pad was only a small modern house. The bulk of Elizabeth Taylor's estate is on the several acre 688 Nimes Road property originally belonging to Warner Baxter and later to Jack Ryan, designer of the Barbie doll. Warner Baxter's listing does not even mention the address of that estate. These are errors I saw in the first 15 minutes I skimmed through the book.

Very interesting although the pictures are small and in most cases you only get a photo of the 'front gate'. I learned a lot. Overall, very good.

This book is a guilty pleasure, really a fun read. I appreciated that every entry came with a requisite image. Granted most of the entries are star's from yesteryear, many of which i dont have a clue about, but I thoroughly enjoyed the book nonetheless. If you have any interest in this sort of thing, then I highly recommend it.