The House That Jack McDermott Built (1923-1962)
- KP
- Jul 24
- 3 min read
It was “The House That Jack Built,” cobbled together with discarded movie sets and prop pieces from some of Hollywood’s most famous pictures.
In 1921, writer-director John “Jack” McDermott purchased a lot in the Hollywood Hills overlooking the Cahuenga Pass—and for two years, the eccentric filmmaker lived there inside a piano box.
While at Schenck Productions one day in 1923, he spotted several rooms used in Norma Talmadge’s recently completed The Song of Love, a drama set in Algeria. McDermott purchased them and everything inside, and hauled it all to his hillside property, where he built a foundation from rocks he found in the area.
Over the next several years, he continued to add onto the home with memorable set pieces from: The Sheik (two turrets), Hansel and Gretel short starring Baby Peggy (witch’s hut), The Thief of Baghdad (tower and table), The Black Pirate (captain’s cabin, used as dining room), Old Ironsides (four canons, placed on roof); The Hunchback of Notre Dame (mirror), Robin Hood (stool), and Ashes of Vengeance (carved wooden doors).
“I find an odd bit of furniture or a broken picture on some motion picture lot,” McDermott told Photoplay in 1924. “I take it and make it fit somewhere in the house. It has played its part and it’s been discarded. I save it from oblivion. Here in this shanty of mine there are reflected memories of many of the screen’s classics.”
The “crazy house,” as McDermott called it, was more like a funhouse with secret passage ways between rooms, staircases hidden behind bookshelves, and an underground labyrinth of tunnels. “Stepping into the house is like stepping into a whirlpool. You are lost,” explained Los Angeles Evening Post-Record’s Don Ryan after a memorable visit in 1924.
Outside, it was a mix of tranquility (tiled patio and fountains) and terrifying (graveyard with tombstones and dozens of skulls).
Parties were frequent and legendary—one night, as McDermott beat a drum, belly dancers appeared from a trapdoor in the living room and put on an eye-popping show for an intimate group that included John Barrymore. Those who wished to take a dip in the pool were provided with swimsuits … that dissolved upon contact with water.
Given the home’s lore, local teens whispered the freakish house must be haunted, and in 1935 a group of nine boys hiked up the hill on a ghost-hunting expedition. McDermott was away, but his night watchman remained on duty, and when he heard trespassers he fired his gun into the dark, striking 15-year-old Bill Hurst in the leg.
By the 1940s, McDermott’s Hollywood career was essentially over and his reclusive tendencies devolved into total isolation. He had been “morbid” for months when on the night of July 22, 1946, the 52 year old drew the curtains in his bedroom and swallowed 28 sleeping pills. Writer-director Jacques Jaccard discovered McDermott, who was rushed to the hospital but never regained consciousness.
Months later in January 1947, fire nearly destroyed the Hollywood Hills landmark. Serial arsonist Lewis O. Detrez confessed, yet escaped from the hospital (still in handcuffs and wearing pajamas) before he could be prosecuted.
The House That Jack Built was inherited by his nephew Edward and eventually purchased by electronics engineer Mac Brainerd for his young family. But in 1962 the ramshackle residence
was deemed unsafe by inspectors and demolished. “It was built like a movie set, never built to last,” noted Brainerd. “And when Jack died, the house died with him.”
Amid the vacant property’s ruins, one piece remains today: the spider mosaic that once spun its web over the pool.
