How Robert Taylor Built His Dream House

By MICHAEL OLDHAM | Special to the Palisadian-Post

In 1956, actor Robert Taylor appeared on the popular TV game show “What’s My Line?” Taylor was one of the episode’s “mystery guests.”

Taylor was asked: “Are you in the world of entertainment or amusement?”

The Nebraska-born star answered, “Yes.”

“Are you more [of] a flicker-type fellow … cinema actor?”

Taylor answered, “Yes.”

And if one of the panelists had asked Taylor whether he was currently living in the Upper Riviera neighborhood of Pacific Palisades, California, he would have also answered in the affirmative.

For by 1956, Taylor had already spent at least a full year residing high up in the Palisades on San Remo Drive, at the point where it circles around to connect with Casale Road.

He had been considering selling it: A letter to a friend said he had been asking $137,000 but accepted $125,000, plus some furniture.
“All in all I think we were damn lucky. We won’t make any money on the deal but we’ll sure as hell break even and will have lived here very comfortably for four years.”

In case you were wondering, that address on four acres was last valued at $6.7 million.

In 1954 it was a sprawling Contemporary-style home Taylor built for him and his second wife, Ursula Thiess.

Taylor had married the younger, Germany-born actress that same year.

And it would be Thiess who would supervise the construction of what would be the first joint home for the newlyweds.

She would watch as wood, red brick and rock walls were pieced together to create their sprawling home. Topping the house was a homey, shingled roof that had more than one chimney sprouting out of its many angled slices.

By the time Taylor and his wife moved into their new house in 1954, he was in his mid-40s and had many well-known films behind him such as “Magnificent Obsession.”

The 1935 film was Taylor’s first as a leading-man, complete with his signature combed back hair, one where he played opposite Irene Dunne.

The nearly six-foot-tall Taylor went on to star opposite other leading ladies of the day, including Barbara Stanwyck in the 1936 film, “His Brother’s Wife.”

Off-screen, Taylor would marry Stanwyck in 1939.

Taylor once referred to Stanwyck as “one of the finest actresses in show business.”

But a few years before Taylor became a Palisadian, the famous Hollywood couple would suffer a case of trouble in paradise and split, officially divorcing in 1951.

But the move into the Palisades created a fresh start for blue-eyed Taylor on a number of fronts. By 1955, the year after his move in, the longtime MGM star not only had a new house and a new wife, but a new son.

Terrance was the first of two children that the always clean-cut Taylor and his glamorous brunette wife, Thiess, would have together. The San Remo house and property would make a half-acre-plus playpen for the new family.

Today, the four-bedroom house features a pool that sits beside a lush green backyard with plenty of foliage keeping its privacy. This would suit Taylor’s personality, who as a kid “preferred being alone on the prairie or in the woods to playing football with the gang.”

But Taylor, known as “the man with the perfect face,” could simply going upstairs to peek out of a dormer window to see the city.

And while Taylor once admitted that he “was not—I still am not—gregarious,” he and his wife didn’t avoid their fellow Palisadians.

The couple became close to one of their famous neighbors.

“Ronald and Nancy Davis Reagan lived almost next door, in Pacific Palisades and we became best friends,” Thiess once recalled.

For Taylor, living among the rich and famous crowd must have seemed like a far-fetched dream come true for the one-time struggling actor who once recalled an “awful night” early in his acting days of the 1930s when he realized he “had one thin dime in the world” to support his mother, grandmother and himself.

But even after hitting it big in Hollywood, Taylor would confess that others “seem to think I’m a millionaire, but I’m not.” He added, “I’ve saved a little money but every time a chance came along to strike it rich outside the movie business, like the real estate deals of some stars, I was always a dollar short or a day late.”

Taylor and Thiess would remain friends with the Reagans after they had parted with San Remo Drive in the late 1950s for a ranch in nearby Mandeville Canyon. Their daughter, Tessa, was born in 1959 and then-Palisadian Nancy would be named her godmother.

Taylor remained married to Thiess the remainder of his life. In 1969, Taylor passed away in Santa Monica.

Michael Oldham is co-author of “Movie Star Homes: The Famous to the Forgotten.”