This observation applied quite accurately to the home of that era’s greatest name, Charlie Chaplin.
“ whole life then was a movie,” one acquaintance later recalled. The result was a rambling, 10,000-square-foot Italian Renaissance palazzo with a banquet hall, a projection room, the requisite swimming pool, an aviary, and an artificial brook stocked with trout. Nettled by her celebrated siblings’ success, Talmadge demanded an address worthy of her husband’s stardom-and her own desire to entertain on an epic scale. Not far from Falcon Lair, another concession to marital harmony was erected simultaneously for comedian Buster Keaton and his wife, Natalie Talmadge, sister of the actors Norma and Constance. The couple traveled to Europe, purchasing quantities of antiques, including a gold-trimmed Gothic throne that Rambova, with her flair for sensation, planned to convert into a toilet.
STARS OF THE SILENT AGE HOLLYWOOD FREE
Her ambitious plans for the residence, dubbed Falcon Lair, consumed much of her husband’s free time-and his income, which exceeded $500,000 per year. An aspiring costume and set designer, Rambova was born Winifred Shaughnessy in Salt Lake City, Utah, but changed her name after studying ballet under a Russian dancer and choreographer.
The star of the 1922 hit Blood and Sand, in which he portrayed a master bullfighter, chose to construct an appropriately Spanish-style villa for himself and his wife, Natacha Rambova. For Rudolph Valentino, this ideal setting was an 8-acre estate perched atop a crest in a then-undeveloped section of Beverly Hills.
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