News about Nelson’s Halvern home (which was sold to Fred MacMurray)…
Former MacMurray home gets a remodel
Fred MacMurray, a leading man who co-starred in 1944’s Double Indemnity and played the father on the TV series My Three Sons, was one of those Hollywood actors who relished investing in real estate.
He purchased a wide range of properties, including orange groves and office buildings, although MacMurray and his family didn’t move much. By one account, the family lived in their Brentwood home for 56 years.
He died at age 83 in 1991. He was married for 37 years to actress June Haver, who died at 79 in 2005.
John Cottrell, a man Architectural Digest has canonized as one of the world’s top 100 interior designers, would like to buy MacMurray’s home, but it’s not yet available, he said, and so he leased it, promptly stripping the wallpaper and installing new carpet.
“I was as happy as a pig in mud,” Cottrell said. “I love to work on good American houses.”
The MacMurray house, built in 1939 for singer Nelson Eddy, has four or five bedrooms in about 7,000 square feet. It is on nearly 2 acres.
It isn’t listed for sale, but when it is, expect to see it come on the market in the vicinity of $10 million.
Note: according to Nelson’s close friend K.T. Ernshaw, Nelson began work on this house a year or so earlier than 1939, with the intention of it being the home he shared with Jeanette MacDonald – where they would raise their children. After all the work he put into it – Nelson might not have sold it as quickly as he did had things turned out differently. He ultimately moved in to it with wife Ann Franklin and her son Sidney, Jr…. he had no children with Ann.