Just His Type of Collectible

Hemingway! London! Lennon! Local Mover and Shaker Steve Soboroff Collects Typewriters Once Owned by Famous Writers

Long before the word processor (or computer keyboard), the lowly typewriter reigned as a writer’s best friend. Once upon a time, the greatest writers of 20th-century literature, from popular novelists such as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler to short-story master Raymond Carver and Hollywood screenwriters Herman Mankiewicz and Paddy Chayefsky, used one of these contraptions to bang out their masterpieces. Today, the typewriter has been largely forgotten, seen only in old newspaper movies. But one Pacific Palisades resident not only collects memories of them, he collects the typewriters themselves. Real estate developer Steve Soboroff has amassed six vintage typewriters. Not a large number for a collection perhaps, but oh, what typewriters they are. ‘People collect all kinds of things, but these are really rare,’ says Soboroff, whose writing machines include those once owned by Ernest Hemingway, George Bernard Shaw, Tennessee Williams and Jack London. His most recent acquisition came mid-June, when he purchased a typewriter once owned by one of the greatest songwriters who ever lived: the Beatles’ John Lennon. But the typewriter that spawned Soboroff’s interest in collecting these nearly-obsolete writing machines was owned by a different kind of writer. ‘I loved Jim Murray,’ he says of the longtime Los Angeles Times sports journalist. ‘I grew up with Jim Murray’s columns.’ After he purchased the late columnist’s 1946 Remington in 2003, Soboroff’s love affair with the American typewriter was born. For three decades, Soboroff and his wife, Patti, have lived in the Palisades, where they have raised children Jacob, Miles, Molly, Hannah and Leah. For Angelenos who follow municipal politics, Soboroff, 61, needs no introduction. The chairman and chief executive officer of the Playa Vista Company has served on myriad boards, including the Advisory Board at UCLA’s School of Public Affairs. He is the former senior advisor to Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, a longtime supporter of Big Brothers of Greater Los Angeles and, just two months ago, he led the charge in underwriting the 18th annual Maccabiah Games in Israel. In 2001, with Riordan’s endorsement, Soboroff ran as a Republican candidate against Antonio Villaraigosa for Mayor of Los Angeles. Both candidates lost to re-elected incumbent James Hahn. About six months later, Soboroff joined Playa Vista, which incorporates housing, commercial office space, retail, parks and habitat protection in a community just below the Loyola Marymount University campus near Playa del Rey. So with all of these endeavors, how did this active entrepreneur and family man find the time to develop a soft spot for the 20th-century writing machine? The answer, of course, involves baseball. ‘When I was running for mayor, I bought a glove for $30,000,’ Soboroff explains. ‘It was the mitt Sandy Koufax wore when he pitched the no-hitter against the Giants [in 1965].’ When Soboroff resold the glove in 2003, it fetched $130,000 ‘ ‘the fourth highest amount for a glove ever sold,’ he says. Soboroff had some credit left on his auction-house account when he saw the Jim Murray typewriter come up on the block. He bid against the L.A. Times for the typewriter, and he believes his advantage was that, unlike the Times rep, he didn’t have to phone his superiors for permission to bid higher. Soboroff nabbed Murray’s Remington for $20,000. Since purchasing it, Soboroff has taken Murray’s machine around the country to raise money for journalism scholarships. ‘I’m willing to let this typewriter tour,’ he says. Murray’s typewriter whet Soboroff’s appetite, and he began scouring the Internet for celebrity estate sales. He tracked down a typewriter Hemingway employed during his years in Cuba. In Savannah, Georgia, where Hemingway’s 1940 Royal was displayed, ‘People were lining up to see it who had driven 300 miles,’ he says. Soboroff traveled to Boston to verify the authenticity of Hemingway’s Royal, matching the typewriter’s font against that found in Hemingway’s letters, which are housed at the Kennedy Library. It matched up. Next came a Remington noiseless portable purchased in 1935 by George Bernard Shaw. Jack London, whose letters are kept at the Huntington Library in Pasadena, became his next prize. Soboroff coughed up a pretty penny to purchase the ‘Call of the Wild’ author’s 1910 Columbia Bar-Lock, ‘one of the finest typewriters ever made,’ with an inlaid pearl design on the carriage. Tennessee Williams’ Corona model was only produced between December 1937 and April 1942, during the years when the playwright wrote such early works as ‘Cairo, Shanghai, Bombay!’ and ‘The Field of Blue Children.’ Lennon’s Imperial (The Good Companion Model T) was among the late Beatle’s possessions originally auctioned by his Aunt Mimi to a Liverpool charity involving musical therapy. Soboroff came across Lennon’s writing instrument during an estate sale overseen by Bonhams auction house in England. The portable was originally auctioned through Sotheby’s in 1999. However, the owner succumbed to the economic downturn and put it up for sale earlier this year. ‘I was going to get on an airplane to go get it,’ Soboroff says regarding his summer purchase, which was probably used in the late Beatle’s first attempts at songwriting as a teenager. ‘He was living with his aunt when he owned it,’ he says. There are also the typewriters that got away. At the estate sale for Bob Hope, the late comedian’s daughter did not want to include his. When the Neverland Ranch foreclosed, Soboroff was hoping that Michael Jackson’s typewriter would be among the assets sold. No dice. Soboroff does not consider himself a typewriter expert, nor does he associate with fellow aficionados. ‘I found two in a month, then went two years without anything,’ he says. But he has a love for the thingamajigs which may date back to an old Jerry Lewis skit, ‘The Typewriter.’ ‘There’s an aura with these machines that’s like a magnet,’ Soboroff says. ‘They’re so personal with people.’ Soboroff keeps an old typewriter ‘next to my computer in my office’ at Playa Vista, while the expensive ones are in a vault, somewhere outside of the Palisades.   ’The typewriter is making a comeback,’ Soboroff says, evoking a fellow Palisadian: ‘Tom Hanks is a huge typewriter collector. People are going back to their roots and trying to make their lives simpler.’ Typewriters (and their operating manuals) are not the only 20th century artifacts that Soboroff enjoys amassing. He has a collection of 250 first issues of magazines, ranging from Playboy, Fortune and Forbes to MAD, Ebony and Golf. But typewriters are special objects of history for the erstwhile political aspirant. So what’s the next typewriter in his crosshairs? Could it be the one F. Scott Fitzgerald pounded to craft ‘The Great Gatsby,’ considered by many to be the great American novel? Or the one Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond used to collaborate on ‘Some Like It Hot’? What about the model on which Budd Schulberg punched up his debut novel, ‘What Makes Sammy Run?,’ or the screenplay for ‘On The Waterfront’? Soboroff doesn’t know, nor is he in any rush to purchase typewriter number seven. ‘It’s like fly fishing in Sun Valley, Idaho,’ Soboroff says. ‘You have to wait and wait until you catch a big one.’