STAR HOMES: For Many Years, Lawrence Welk Drove Home to the Upper Riviera

By MICHAEL OLDHAM | Contributing Writer

Big band leader Lawrence Welk brought accordion-playing, “champagne music” and plenty of bubbles into the living rooms of millions of television viewers during the 27-year run of “The Lawrence Welk Show.”

Early in his career, Welk sold his car in order to commit to a walking regimen. His goal was to lose the extra pounds he’d recently packed on. The walking was combined with a strict diet. Welk claimed this “drastic cure” was successful.

By the time he moved to Pacific Palisades circa mid-1960s, Welk had long ago returned to driving. And if the showman were coming home in 1980, for instance, from a business meeting, a television show taping, or a golf outing, it would be easy to guess his probable route home in the Palisades.

The North Dakota-born Welk would have turned off Sunset Boulevard onto either Amalfi, Minorca, Napoli, Capri, Monaco, or San Remo drive. Welk would take one of these streets north, enjoying the drive through the Riviera.

Along the way, Welk would perhaps smile and wave to one or two familiar dog-walking fellow Palisadians. Such neighbors might instantly know who was behind the wheel, if Welk was inclined on that day to be driving his Model A Ford that had a California license plate that read “A1ANA2.”

The plate characters were short for the musician’s trademark count-off, “And a-ONE, and a-TWO.” The car was seen in a Welk TV show from 1980.

And no matter which route or car Welk had taken on his way home, the 1903-born entertainer would eventually end up on the winding Alta Mura Road. The self-taught accordion player would then make a right onto a private road, one that currently has a street sign labeled “ALTA MURA Rd 1690 – 1714,” along with matching stone walls on each of its street corners.

As Welk was making his right turn, he’d be having one of two types of days. The father of three once said, “There are good days and there are bad days, and this is one of them.”

But it most likely would have been a good day for Welk, who was quoted in a 1971 interview as having recently told a reporter, “I am a very happy man.”

So, in all probability, Welk would be in a good mood as he drove up the ever-increasing incline on Alta Mura before turning into the driveway of the second house, on the right. Welk’s rambling single-story home, built in 1966 and originally designed by architect Cliff May, widely considered to be the father of the California ranch house.

Stepping out of his car, former farm boy Welk might run a hand over his slicked back hair and take a deep breath. He would catch the smell of the chaparral vegetation wafting through the Santa Monica Mountains, where his house was nestled.

Perhaps he would turn westward and toward the Santa Monica Bay to enjoy a whiff of the ocean he was fond of having nearby.

Shutting his car door, Welk would walk toward his house of stone exterior and wood shake roofing. Entering through the front door, he’d look forward to being greeted by his wife, Fern, whom the orchestra leader married in 1931.

Welk and Fern’s routine would have them enjoying dinner at 5:30 p.m., according to a Pottstown Mercury piece that ran in 1971. The couple were said to have quiet evenings together. After his wife would retire for the night, Welk would stay up reading “books on how to develop human nature.” These would be religious books, for Welk was a devoutly religious man. He would then turn in and “sleep regular at night.”

Lawrence Welk was living on Alta Mura as late as 1987, but by the time of his death in 1992, he was living in Santa Monica. He was 89 years of age when he left his “three families” behind. Welk once said, “I have three families: my own, my musical family and the family of listeners who follow my champagne music extremely.”

Michael Oldham, co-author of Movie Star Homes: The Famous to the Forgotten and author of the novel The Valentino Formula and Flashback Los Angeles: Postcard Views, Then and Now can be reached at HollywoodLandings@sbcglobal.net.