Producing A Period Piece

Lawrence and Betsy Bridges had simply planned to renovate their Italianate home. But soon the 'project' became a 'concept,' one only a maverick filmmaker could dream.

Taken From LA Times Homes Section

Lawrence Bridges is used to thinking on a grand scale. As a creator of Super Bowl commercials for Nike and Coke, he makes major productions out of something as simple as taking a sip of soda. So when he and his wife, Betsy, decided to renovate their Pacific Palisades house, he saw a chance to turn their 1928 Italianate Revival villa into an elaborate Spanish-style estate that could double as a set for a Hollywood period movie.

"Just days before the contractor was about to start work, Larry goes, 'What's the concept?' " Betsy said. "I said, 'What do you mean, the concept? I thought the concept was patching the walls, tying the foundation together and redoing the floors.' He said, 'No that's not what the idea is.' " He wanted a theme for the entire production.

Inspired by a recent trip to Peru, it didn't take the couple long to come up with an idea: They would remake the house to resemble a grand casa from 18th century Cuzco -- with richly dark wood floors, shimmering glazed walls, hand-colored tiles and Moroccan stenciling. "We quickly realized what a deep, albeit newly minted, passion we had developed for South American art and architecture," said Betsy, whose great-great-grandmother was Peruvian. "We were no longer content with just re-staining our light oak flooring and slipcovering our existing furniture."

"We wanted Peru," added Lawrence.

Betsy went to work as the production manager, bringing in Santa Monica interior designer Jean Zinner to help transform the deteriorating 6,000-square-foot house, built for Oscar-winning director Frank Borzage, into something extraordinary.

It would not be easy.

The once popular movie star hangout -- where Barbara Stanwyck used to cook spaghetti dinners on Sundays after Borzage, Clark Gable and other Hollywood friends finished their polo games -- was showing its age.

Sometime before 1990, when the Bridges purchased the property, the previous owners had stripped the structure of much of its character, bleaching the floors white and plastering the walls with black paper. The 1994 Northridge earthquake and the 1997 El Nino rains had left the place teetering on the edge of its foundation.

There were other complications: The Bridges quickly discovered that replicating an ancient decor from Peru was almost impossible. "Very little furniture was available for sale or easy export to Los Angeles, other than our dining room chairs, which came from the Nazca region, and a reverse-painted mirror," Betsy said.

Even so, the couple refused to revise their plans for the house, which they share with their 13-year-old daughter, Melanie. Lawrence, famous for his unconventional approach to filmmaking, knew they could always improvise. The couple -- assisted by Zinner -- went about assembling a team that included local furniture and tile makers, painters and a muralist to replicate what they could not import or unearth in antique stores. Lawrence enlarged the pictures he had taken of the interiors of a variety of Peruvian locales, including the lobby of the El Libertador hotel in Cuzco, to show the artisans. Betsy, meanwhile, combed through literature on early 20th century California and Mexico for inspiration -- expanding the project to include other Latin American influences.

Malibu's Adamson House was a major source of ideas, beginning with its extensive use of Malibu Potteries tile and ceiling and wall stenciling. A stack of secondhand books on Mexican furnishings, printed in the 1950s, provided the couple with detailed drawings of carved chairs and cabinets. The recently published book, "Casa California," by Elizabeth McMillian and Melba Levick, became a bible of sorts, with detailed colored pictures of Spanish-style houses in Southern California.

Trips to Santa Fe, N.M., stimulated a host of other ideas. "The heavily notched and brightly colored rooflines on the St. Francis Auditorium were reproduced in the dark, wooden built-in shelving and painted ceiling beams in the living room," Betsy said. "We reproduced a pair of gorgeous 19th century iron sconces we photographed in a shop on Canyon Road."

Lawrence remembers agonizing for hours over the proper texture for the walls. He tried to recall, as best he could, how the walls looked in a restaurant at the El Libertador. "It was hard to get the exact sense of it in my head," he said. "I was afraid that the walls would turn out too bold, with too much texture. I didn't want it to look like Taco Bell."

His quest for creative control sometimes unnerved the construction crew. He jokes that he set up a "grumbling room" on the 1 1/2-acre estate where "the concept contractor" could go and complain.

The meticulous, yet maverick, way Lawrence approached the renovation is similar to how he makes commercials and films. At age 23, he landed a job as a production assistant on Francis Ford Coppola's "The Conversation." He then poured his creative energy into starting his own advertising and movie video production company, called Red Car Inc. He edited Michael Jackson's breakthrough video "Beat It" in 1982 before going on to shake up the ad industry by creating "anticommercials" notable for their jerky, hand-held camera angles captured on grainy film. He edited the "Walk on the Wild Side" Honda Motorcycle spot staring Lou Reed, leading to collaboration on ads for Nike, American Express and Lee Jeans. He wrote, directed and produced his own movie, a quirky film called "12" in reference to the number of years it took him to complete the project. He now shows the film "guerrilla-style" for free on the sides of buildings throughout Los Angeles.

When it came to redoing his family's house, Lawrence was determined to achieve something different and original, even if it took awhile. "He would say, 'Hey, let's tile the risers,' " Betsy said. "I'd say, 'Well, OK. Let's do it.' So much for having the project done in six weeks."

After two years of work, the Bridges finally have their Peruvian villa. "What we were trying to do was go deeper into the Spanish roots in the New World," Lawrence said. "I think we have succeeded in creating a new version of the Spanish Revival concept. We've achieved Peru, but with an American accent."

The attention to detail is evident throughout the estate. A long, winding path leads visitors up a steep hill to a wide front door, inspired in part by the carved wooden balconies of Peru. The door opens into a spacious entryway, featuring a fountain made of colorful reproduction Malibu tile, produced by Robert

Harris in Topanga Canyon. Betsy combed through color swatches, but ended up picking dark navy, purplish blue, scarlet red, yellow and white.

A curving staircase leads visitors up to the main floor that holds a series of large rooms linked by wide, arched doorways and an expanse of dark wood floors. While peeling back layers of plaster during the house's renovation, the Bridges discovered ornamental vents decorated with center medallions featuring Spanish galleon crosses. "We really had thought that the house had been stripped long ago of its original character," Betsy said. "Then I spotted it: the Spanish cross."

They decided to use the motif in other rooms. In a powder room, a reverse-painted Peruvian mirror is suspended above an Argentinean console and hammered-tin sink. The Spanish cross is featured as a central motif in the room's gold tumbled-marble floor. Drawing inspiration from a book she has on California Missions, she decided to replicate the curved roofline of the Santa Inez Mission along the top of the wall. "This room reflects the practical nature and the spiritual soul of the house," Betsy said.

The living room features deeply carved furniture, created by Magart Mexican Furnishings in North Hollywood. Several couches are upholstered in Italian chenille, French silk and velvet in shades of sage, burgundy and gold.

The room is decorated with 19th century French and English ceramics as well as Latin American figurines and religious art -- both old and new. Some of the walls and the wood-beamed ceilings are painted blue, gold and red, similar to those in the Adamson House.

A few steps away, a family room showcases a carved turquoise entertainment unit, which is crowned by scalloped arches made from papier-mache. The unit also features carved doors copied from chair backs found in the El Libertador and a mural of the San Fernando Mission. But the concept and color scheme were based on a similar unit in Richard Nixon's former "Western White House" in San Clemente.

Walls of the dining room, meanwhile, are embellished with highly intricate, Moorish patterns in gold and red. The swirling and flowering designs are echoed in the stenciled ceiling. A large period-style Mexican chandelier is hung over a dining room table that seats 10 in carved and tooled leather chairs from the Nazca region of Peru.

All the main rooms of the house open to a 60-foot-long balcony with a panoramic view of the ocean.

"We feel blessed to be here," Betsy said. "Do I think we have achieved Peru? Yes I do. I may never make it back there again, but every day it's part of our lives. This house resonates very deeply with us."

Inspiring landmark

When searching for inspiration for their home renovation, Betsy and Lawrence Bridges traveled a short distance up the coast to visit Malibu's Adamson House, a registered historical landmark known for its lavish use of Malibu decorative tiles -- the best surviving examples -- and stenciled ceilings.

The Spanish Colonial Revival house was designed as a beach home by architect Stiles O. Clements in 1929 for Rhoda Rindge Adamson and her husband, Merritt Huntley Adamson, who founded the vast Adohr Stock Farms.

Malibu Potteries, established in 1926 by Rhoda's mother, May Rindge, produced a stunning profusion of tiles for the house -- created from the red and buff burning clays of the area -- that included an intricate "rug" in the loggia entrance hall.

Now maintained as a museum, the house also features Moorish pavilions with tile-clad fronts and pointed arch windows, hand-wrought filigree ironwork, hand-carved teak doors and Spanish-style furniture, most of it produced locally.

The Malibu Lagoon Museum Assn. offers guided tours of the house, located at 23200 Pacific Coast Highway. Call (310) 456-8432 for information or visit www.adamsonhouse.org.

Masters at work

A talented group of artisans -- among them, a muralist, a tile maker and a woodcarver -- worked to transform the interior of the Pacific Palisades house into an authentic Latin American-style casa.

Los Angeles-based muralist Nancy Kintisch stenciled the ceilings and painted the walls with swirling designs of gold, blue and red. She drew inspiration from the patterns on old Spanish and Moorish tiles that are used on the walls of Peruvian villas. "It was like we were creating a Spanish Colonial fantasy house," she said.

Kintisch -- whose clients include Bette Midler, Jeff Bridges and the Saudi royal family -- specializes in "highly ornate painted decoration," she says. She operates her studio out of her home in Atwater Village.

After struggling to find furniture that would fit the decor, Betsy and Lawrence Bridges hired Miguel Garcia, owner of Magart Mexican Furnishings in North Hollywood, to make a dozen pieces.

Betsy spotted Garcia's store one day while driving down Magnolia Boulevard and stopped to ask if he could replicate the furniture designs she found in a stack of second-hand books on Mexican interiors. He said he would be willing to give it a try. The result was amazing: Garcia created heavily carved side tables, couches, cabinets and consoles out of mahogany, elder and birch. Each piece took several months to complete.

"We incorporated different carvings into every piece of furniture. Everything had to be done by hand," Garcia said.

Robert Harris was hired to make tiles for the entryway fountain, the stair risers and the downstairs bathrooms.

"Every room was a blank page," said Harris, one of the first (and still one of the few) artisans in Los Angeles to master the methods of reproducing Malibu tile. "We just worked on making something very special."

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