Virginia Bruce: The Hollywood Singer Who Became the First Mayor of the Palisades

By MICHAEL OLDHAM | Special to the Palisadian-Post

Virginia Bruce was an original Goldwyn Girl during a creative height of the Hollywood musical in the 1930s whose most famous moment may have been introducing the world to Cole Porter’s classic “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.”

She was also, for 40 years, a well-known figure around the Palisades, where her neighbors did not care that she was a leading lady. They cared more about her prized dahlias.

Bruce came to California to escape the Dakota cold, and never moved back.

She was born in Minnesota in 1910, just when the birth of Hollywood was getting under way. Growing up in North Dakota, she would leave freezing cold winters behind when she came to California to take up college courses.

Bruce left her anonymity behind forever when she married Hollywood leading romantic actor John Gilbert, known as “The Great Lover,” in a 1932 ceremony. By then, Gilbert’s career was on a downward spiral, while Virginia Bruce’s budding Hollywood career was on a trajectory towards her eventual silver screen stardom.

Virginia Bruce took her blonde hair and light brown eyes to Hollywood in the late 1920s, playing in some bit parts. She would become one of the 20 original “Goldwyn Girls,” a musical stock company of female dancers employed by producer Samuel Goldwyn. Her first such Goldwyn Girls film was the 1930 Eddie Cantor vehicle, “Whoopee!”

Within a few short years, the slender-built Bruce would become a featured player and then a leading lady of Hollywood. The New York Times obituary marking her February 1982 passing told of the actress playing “the quintessential Ziegfeld showgirl in the lavish 1936 musical film ‘The Great Ziegfeld.’”

Virginia Bruce, who once said her “chief purpose in life is to fall in love” would be a leading lady in films during the 1930s and 1940s.

After that, she would spend her years in Pacific Palisades.

Hollywood biographer Scott O’Brien wrote “Virginia Bruce – Under My Skin,” published in 2008 by Bear Manor.

Below, the author offers a timeline of the actress’ life inside the Palisades.

On January 15, 1939, Bruce and her producer/director husband J. Walter Ruben had a housewarming for their new colonial home at 1141 Maroney Lane.

They called their estate, north of Sunset with a commanding view of the Pacific Ocean, “Wildtree.”  The elegant graystone mansion last sold for $13 million.

The home was surrounded with dozens of saplings and a large spreading chestnut tree.  Inside, a soft apple-green carpet was complimented by rich reddish-brown hardwood furnishing.

Bruce had a five-year-old daughter, Susan Ann, from a previous marriage to silent screen idol John Gilbert.  She and Ruben had a son, Christopher, born in 1941.  Following her marriage to Ruben in 1937, family and home took precedence over career.

In May 1940, Bruce told one reporter, “I hear the birds and the squirrels, the sun is shining, and I’ve got to be up.  I putter around in garden, I read and I work at my needlepoint and play with Susan.  I’m never idle a minute.”

Aside from Bruce’s prize-winning dahlias, her corn and watermelon patch, a 1940 issue of House and Garden featured a tour of Wildtree.

Her film career came to a sudden standstill when husband Ruben died unexpectedly in August 1942.

In 1943, it was reported that Bruce was dating Clark Gable, who had recently lost his wife, actress Carole Lombard.  Their attraction was bolstered by consolation. Bruce insisted they were “just friends.”

In March 1944, Bruce was elected as the first Honorary Mayor of Pacific Palisades, a position she held through 1953.

At a 1944 press conference, Bruce told Palisadians, “From now on, you can bring all your troubles to me instead of to Mayor Bowron of Los Angeles.”

In 1946, Bruce met a young Turkish citizen named Ali M. Ipar.

In August of that year, the two were married at her new Pacific Palisades residence at 1329 Amalfi Drive.

That was was when she sold her home on Maroney Lane to actress Deanna Durbin.

In 1950, Bruce and her family relocated to Istanbul, Turkey, for a two year stay.

Upon their return home to Amalfi Drive, Bruce got involved with television work, making her final film, “Strangers When We Meet” (1960), playing Kim Novak’s mother.

Her marriage to Ipar would be over by the close of 1964. By 1973, Bruce had relocated to a smaller home in Pacific Palisades.

She would pass away at the Motion Picture Country House in Woodland Hills, at the age of 71.

Her final request was to have her ashes returned to Wildtree, the Maroney Lane home the actress cherished.