Spiderpool-04
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The Secrets of the Spiderpool - Part 4: 1947-1952
- by Rowan
1947: With Friends Like This…
Jack’s career seems to have had its ups and downs in the 1930s and ‘40s, and after his death in 1946 his estate did, too.
| MINARET-STUDDED MANSION OF LATE WRITER BURNS |
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The Palatial, minaret-studded home of the late Jack McDermott, film writer, last night was swept by a fire of undetermined origin. The blaze was discovered late yesterday by Jacques Jaccard, veteran film director and friend of McDermott who had lived in the structure since the writer’s death last July. The residence was particularly noticeable because of the many golden-tipped minarets which surrounded the golden mosque-like dome of the house itself. |
Ownership of Jack McDermott’s Spiderpool-related property was legally transferred to his nephew Edward shortly after the fire. He and his wife had decided the home didn’t suit their needs, and they let others live there. The cause of the fire that ravaged the house during Jaccard’s tenancy was never explained.
1947: The March of Progress
An unrelated 1947 event would have important ramifications for the Spiderpool. When the Stereo Realist Camera hit the market, it triggered a boom in three-dimensional photography. Many early Realist slides survive, some taken at the Spiderpool; they can be confidently dated to 1947 at the earliest.
Harold Lloyd was introduced to the Realist by a friend who owned a Hollywood camera shop, and Lloyd was working to master this new genre by “the late 1940s”. Lloyd was a serious amateur photographer; he appeared in ads for the Realist by 1949, founded and served as the first president of the Hollywood Stereo Society in 1950, and wrote the introduction for what is still considered the bible for the Realist camera. Many of Hollywood’s biggest names were early stereo photography devotees, but none of them as committed as Lloyd. He is said to have photographed hundreds of thousands of nudes from “the late 1940’s to the early 1960’s”.
1949: Enter the Inventor
Los Angeles has always had more than its share of colorful characters, in this case an offbeat inventor and his young actress wife. Frustrated by her husband’s eccentricities, the 21-year old actress sued for divorce in 1949. How this ties into the Spiderpool story is explained by the portion of her testimony that describes how her husband made the couple and their child live a half-destroyed castle in a remote spot.
So, surprisingly, McDermott’s “castle”, which earlier evidence had suggested had been completely lost to fire in 1947, was reborn to the historical record in 1949.
1949-52: Tura, Dolores, and Donna, Oh My
Disparate dates associated with cult heroine Tura Satana’s life and career make it difficult to document her contribution to Spiderpool lore. She’s the one model proven to have posed for Lloyd’s stereo camera at the site, but the date is uncertain. Dolores Del Monte has been able to provide us with a much more definite date regarding the Spiderpool’s career, because her modeling career was so short. She recalls posing for a camera club at the Spiderpool at some point between the fall of 1950 and early 1951. This is the earliest date that any nude photos are known to have been taken there.
A 1952 issue of Hit Magazine featured burlesque star and model Donna “Busty” Brown on the cover, which is the next earliest date that can be pinned down.
1949-54: Harold Lloyd
Confusion may reigns as to the actual date, but there is no doubt that silent film legend Harold Lloyd took some – perhaps hundreds – of cheesecake slides at the Spiderpool.
Lloyd was a contemporary of Jack McDermott, and evidence supports the contention that Lloyd would have been familiar with the “crazy house” and pool from the glory days of the 1920s and ‘30s.
Lloyd traveled far and wide to find exotic settings in which to photograph nude models, and it seems logical that at some point he would have remembered his old friend’s colorful pool. With its dimensions and bright tilework, he would have realized instantly, the Spiderpool was an ideal location in which to practice stereo color photography.
1952: More Jack Tales
Newspaper wire services were still spreading stories about Jack’s house after his death. One, in 1952, shed new light on the Spiderpool’s creator.
McDermott set up a big piano box in the Hollywood hills in 1921. One day he spied an old set of an Oriental temple at his studio, and reflected on what a fine room it would make. He hauled the set by burro to his hillside home. From then on his architectural problem was solved.
The image of a house-toting burro headed up the hill would scarcely seem credible if we were discussing someone else, but this is Jack McDermott we’re talking about. A few other new comments help us imagine the scene when Jack’s house was in its heyday:
Underneath “The House That Jack Built” is a labyrinth of tunnels. One tunnel staircase spirals up to a mirrored bedroom with a fireplace under the bed. Another winds up next to the living room fireplace. Legend has it that Jack would beat on a drum while shapely girls in harem outfits drifted out of the trapdoor at parties attended by John Barrymore and other Hollywood characters.
The writer built patios, fountains, rooms and a huge swimming pool of hand-painted tile without any financial distress. He wrote French and Italian tile dealers and said he was a dealer himself, and please send him free samples. He got $7,000 worth that way.
How much of these accounts of McDermott’s shenanigans can be taken at face value is hard to know, but obviously he was seen as a very likeable, and likeably eccentric, smooth-talker.
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