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.

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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.

Connecticut opera program featured Nelson & Jeanette

“MERIDEN – When opera superstar Luciano Pavarotti completed his rendition of “Giorgio,” nearly 50 people at the Augusta Curtis Cultural Center watching the videotaped performance stood and cheered.

That was the reaction that Valerie Bubon, secretary of the Rosa Ponselle Fund, was hoping to get from her program, “Love in Bloom,” Sunday afternoon as she passed on her passion and knowledge of opera to area residents as part of the center’s monthly Sunday cultural series.

“My premise is you don’t need to know about opera to enjoy it,” Bubon said. “I want them to open their minds and their hearts to the music. The singing is beautiful and I want them to be able to enjoy that, that’s the most important goal.”

Starting with the silent film era, Bubon took her audience through a walk through 20th-century opera using examples such as the Broadway hit, “The King and I,” duets with 1930s stars Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald and classic performances from singers such as Pavarotti.”

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Choreographer Anya Flesh worked with Jeanette

“Flesh was born in Seattle in 1933. Her mother, Kaye Brinker, was an actress on radio soap operas. Her stepfather, Manfred B. Lee, was the creator and co-author of the Ellery Queen mystery novels, radio and TV shows and movies. She fell in love with dancing after seeing a performance as a child.

At 17, she got “this harebrained idea to go to Paris to study ballet. My parents let me go, but I didn’t study a lot,” she recalled.

She learned enough to win a position with what was then called Ballet Theatre, and she later became part of the corps de ballet for the Chicago Lyric Opera and toured in the DeMille shows with such stars as Zero Mostel, Barbara Cook and Jeanette MacDonald.

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