Yes, Yes Nanette

During a Casual Afternoon Drive, Actress Nanette Fabray Spotted a Ranch House in the Palisades—And Parked There for Half a Century

By MICHAEL OLDHAM | Special to the Palisadian-Post

One Sunday afternoon in 1963, beloved television entertainer Nanette Fabray was on a drive around Pacific Palisades with her husband, Ranald MacDougall.

It was a relaxed affair: MacDougall, who had written the 1945 Joan Crawford classic, “Mildred Pierce,” was probably at the wheel, his wife enjoying the small-town feel of the town.

The Hollywood couple had probably driven from the much-busier Beverly Hills, where they were living with their young son, Jamie.

The 1960s were a time in the Palisades and elsewhere when parents would pile their kids into the family car and simply drive and observe people, cars, shops or anything that caught their attention, under the nearly year-round sunshine.

And if Jamie was along for Fabray and MacDougall’s lazy afternoon drive, he must not have been distracting his famous mother too much.

At least not during a particular stretch of Sunset Boulevard, on the edge of the Rustic Canyon neighborhood boundaries.

For as her car was passing Rustic Lane, Fabray, in her early 40s at the time, spied not a car nor shop nor person through her automobile window. No. Her brown eyes spotted a ranch house on an acre of land. It was love at first site.

When the 5-foot 8-inch TV star, who started acting in vaudeville at the age of 4, finally got a good look at the house, it was not an impressive sight.

The once-working ranch was in bad shape. It was built in 1938, when Fabray’s career in musical theater acting was in full swing.

As the striking, brown-haired actress gazed at the home, she must have been dreaming of its fixer-upper potential.

And although the one-story structure was in shambles at the time of the purchase, it was still an impressive home and piece of land for someone brought up in San Diego, from birth there, by a fireman father and housewife mother.

But, career-wise, it would seem Fabray would have little time to draw up some improvement plans for the one-acre property.

For in 1963, with her first Tony Award in 1949 for the musical production, “Love Life” behind her, she would win a second for another musical, “Mr. President.”

Offstage, Fabray was also keeping busy, though she was between television gigs at the time. She had worked during 1961 on the “Westinghouse Playhouse” series. And would soon be appearing on TV in 1964, doing some acting on the series, “Burke’s Law.”

Despite her busy schedule and the shape of the ranch house in the 14000 block of Sunset, Fabray and her husband would purchase the house. The multi-talented Fabray, who once told a reporter she thinks of herself primarily as “a tap dancer,” would soon make her mark on the home.

Fabray spoke to the Palisadian-Post in 2004 about the house.

“It was once a real working ranch, so it had a great iron stove and drying room for workers’ clothes,” she explained.
She immediately added a bathroom in the mode of Art Deco.

“My idea for this bathroom started when I found this gorgeous Persian marble somewhere in downtown LA,” Fabray explained at the time. “I purchased all they had, which wasn’t much, and then had the bathroom built around that.”

A short few years later, the ranch would be filled with fresh clutter. Jamie and friends would be hanging out and creating good old-fashioned kid mischief. Animals, including dogs, hens, roosters and parakeets, joined the throng.

After settling her family into the horse-zoned ranch property, it wouldn’t take long before Fabray solidified her Palisadian community ties. She became honorary mayor of Pacific Palisades in 1967.

The seemingly always smiling dancer held the title for a couple of years, before passing the baton to “Mission: Impossible” actor Peter Graves.

In 1973, after starring in the comedy play, “No Hard Feelings,” with fellow actor and Palisadian Eddie Albert, Fabray suffered the loss of her husband. MacDougall passed away in December. This began a tough period for Fabray, both emotionally and financially.

A couple years after MacDougall’s passing, Fabray told the LA Times that “when he died, there was instant calamity, instant catastrophe, instant change, instant madness, major decision.”

But Fabray was a fighter and decided to quickly return to stage work, something she had more than cut back on as a devoted mother and wife. It was not just to keep occupied, rather she needed the money after her finances were thrown into disarray, with the death of MacDougall.

Fast forward to 1981, she recovered financially enough to set about building a multi-bedroom guest house on her property, adjacent to her 5,000-square-foot ranch house. She announced this in a postcard to a famous friend and fellow comic entertainer, Phyllis Diller.

“I’ll start work on building the new house in a couple of weeks,” Fabray wrote in the postcard, dated Aug. 17, 1981. “I split a lot off this property where my house is. I feel like a big time developer.”

By 1992, Fabray would make her guest house her primary residence.

She would sell off her traditional ranch home, effectively splitting her land into two parcels.

This subdivided property move that Fabray can be one strategy that many longtime, semi-retired or retired Palisadians may be considering as a way of remaining in the community they enjoy so much. But perhaps are faced with the reality of fixed incomes and rising property taxes.

But in Fabray’s case, it appears she was not making simply a timely financial move by selling off the main house. A spokesperson, at the time, for Fred Sands Realtors, who had the listing, said Fabray was making the real estate move “because she’s on her own, and it’s too big a place for her.”

The last few decades of her long life saw Fabray splitting her time between the Sunset Boulevard home she’d built in 1982 and a Manhattan Beach house she owned to be close to her son, Jamie, and his family.

Fabray passed away aged 97 in February 2018.

Michael Oldham, co-author of “Movie Star Homes: The Famous to the Forgotten” and author of the novel “The Valentino Formula,” can be reached at hollywoodandings@sbcglobal.net.