7269 Hollywood Boulevard was home to some of the most recognizable names in their respective industries: Norma Talmadge, Douglas Fairbanks, Joseph Schenck, Albert Ralphs, Jack Cudahy, Irving Berlin. And because of their various misfortunes while living under its red-tiled roof—death, divorce, career failure—the nickname “Jinx Mansion” was coined by the press in 1929.
Grocery magnate George A. Ralphs built the 16-room Mission Revival mansion in 1913 at the northeast corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Fuller Avenue on three sprawling acres featuring a tennis court, citrus orchard, and pool that was drained any time the fruit needed watering. Inside, there were three bathrooms, lots of mahogany, and several fireplaces with mantels made of onyx.
Flanked by a pair of ornamental lamp posts (that were later painted with “7269” on the light globes), the curb appeal was heavenly. “A house with a prologue of terraced gardens and an impressive door that is reached by so many flights of stone stairs that one expects to meet St. Peter at the top,” described Elsie McCormick in a 1928 Atlanta Journal profile on Talmadge.
Just six months later after construction of the residence was completed, Ralphs was tragically killed while on a walk in Lake Arrowhead with his wife and two young children.
The 64-year-old had stopped to rest on a boulder when the three-ton rock suddenly came loose and rolled 20 feet down the canyon, dragging him with it. Ralphs, who operated three large grocery stores in Los Angeles, initially survived the accident but died from shock following surgery to amputate his mangled left leg on June 21, 1914.
Ralphs’ widow Wallula inherited the Hollywood estate, where she continued to host some of the town’s most popular social events, often with her teen daughter Annabelle.
In between Wallula’s many travels abroad and summers at her late husband’s Santa Monica beach house, she rented out 7269 Hollywood—and in 1918, it became the bachelor pad of actor Douglas Fairbanks amid his divorce from Anna Sully, as he prepared to make the married Mary Pickford his second wife.
In September of that year, Wallula rented out the home to a name both famous in the meatpacking industry and infamous in the newspapers: Jack Cudahy. The son of wealthy Chicago industrialist Michael Cudahy had recently been discharged from the U.S. Army after suffering a nervous breakdown.
Long before that, Jack became a national sensation in 1910 when he attacked banker Jere Lillis with a butcher knife after coming home to his Kansas City mansion late one night to find the man alone with his wife Edna. The couple promptly divorced and their four young children were given to Jack’s mother and father—yet ended up at a Los Angeles convent after the death of their grandfather. In an effort to regain custody of little Edna (10), Marie (8), Anne (7), and Michael (3), Jack and Edna reconciled and remarried.
After several years living at the Hotel Maryland in Pasadena, in the fall of 1918 the family relocated to 7269 Hollywood Boulevard, which Edna bragged in the press was Fairbanks’ former residence.
However, the Cudahys moved without paying their tab at the ritzy hotel, who sued the couple for $10,000 (more than $200,000 today), the total of their boarding, dining, laundry, and valet service over the course of two years. It wasn’t the first time Jack and Edna had skipped out on their bills—and it wouldn’t be the last.
By February 1921, the Cudahys were several months behind paying the Ralphs mansion’s $500 rent, prompting Wallula to give them a warning: pay in three days or face eviction. When they refused, she filed a suit to regain possession of the property. Edna claimed ignorance of the situation and deflected all inquiries to her husband, who she said was in a sanitarium after yet another mental breakdown.
Thirty days later, reporters found Jack living in a downtown hotel under an assumed name amid rumors that he and Edna had separated and were divorcing. The Cudahys denied any estrangement, yet it would be several more weeks before Jack returned to 7269 Hollywood some time around April 10, 1921. Broke and weeks away from receiving a biannual $50,000 inheritance from his father’s estate, he asked the bank and his sister Clara for a loan, but neither could oblige.
On the morning of April 20, 1921, Jack received a telegram from Clara stating: “Sorry, but find it impossible to do what you ask.” According to Edna, around 10:30 a.m., her husband took a Winchester rifle and went into the bedroom. An hour later, while in her nearby dressing room, Edna heard a gunshot: Jack had apparently propped the rifle between his knees, put the muzzle to his chin—and with his toe, pulled the trigger. “The charge almost severed the head from the body,” reported the Los Angeles Record.
Within weeks of Cudahy’s suicide, the Ralphs regained control of the mansion—and their place in Hollywood society hosting soirees at the prominent estate.
In October 1922, Wallula sold the property for $150,000 to a developer who intended to tear down the nine-year-old home and build a $1.5 million apartment hotel. Nearby residents waged a “bitter fight,” according to the Citizen-News, and the plan fell through, resulting in 7269 Hollywood being rented out for a year to Detroit capitalist Raphael Herman for $7,200 (approx. $135,000 in 2025).
The home’s next occupants welcomed a new kind of distinction: motion picture producer Joseph Schenck and his wife, actress Norma Talmadge.
The power couple purchased the property in 1924 and entertained scores of their famous Hollywood friends and family. Lilyan Tashman came over for tennis matches against Talmadge (and once sprained her ankle); Clara Bow was invited to intimate dinner parties with her then-fiancee Harry Richman; Cecil B. DeMille, Jack Warner, and Irving Thalberg met with Schenck to talk business; Norma’s sisters, actress Constance Talmadge and Natalie Talmadge, wife of Buster Keaton, were regular visitors.
But first they had to get past Dinky the Pomeranian. All guests were forewarned “Beware the Dog” on small plaques affixed to the lamp posts at the home’s main entrance on Hollywood Boulevard. When journalist Elsie McCormick came by the home in 1928 to interview Talmadge, she was relieved to learn the tiny pup wasn’t around—he was at the veterinarian to be tested for rabies, “casually explained” the actress.
“It would be awkward if he turns out to be mad,” remarked Talmadge. “He bit four of my guests during the last week.”
When decorating the home, Talmadge was inspired by her film Ashes of Vengeance, a 16th-century French period piece produced by Schenck. The actress had purchased many of the set pieces herself in Paris, and when production wrapped she had the furniture sent to 7269 Hollywood for her personal boudoir, which was done in spring-grass green.
The living room was “large enough to house a rodeo” and embellished with white jade plants and roped crystal candlesticks. Japanese gold pillows added elegance to Talmadge’s favorite sitting room. She served tea to guests with the same silver set from an afternoon visit with the King of England, George V.
Talmadge and Schenck were fortunately not home one fateful day in 1928 when the “jinx” nearly claimed its latest victim—right out of the sky. Hollywood stuntman Al Wilson was flying overhead when his plane’s propeller suddenly broke off. Wilson safely parachuted down onto the Schenck-Talmadge roof, then rolled off it, breaking his arm. The plane crashed into the estate’s garden, while the propeller landed a few blocks away at 7124 Fountain Avenue.
In addition to 7269 Hollywood, the famous couple owned three other properties, and any time they were away, they rented out the massive mansion. German actor Emil Jannings, who won the first Academy Award for Best Actor in 1928, paid $1,250-a-month to live here while attempting to break into the talkies, but failed and left “a disappointed man,” reported columnist Florabel Muir, who coined “Jinx Mansion” (not Louella Parsons as widely claimed).
The next occupant was composer Irving Berlin, whom Schenck had signed to a contract with United Artists the same year in 1929. Soon after moving in with his wife and daughter, the toddler fell and hit her head, requiring stitches. “It is the bad luck jinx of the Schenck house beginning to work,” wrote Mollie Merrick, who blamed the “ill-mannered genie who directs the destinies of those who live in the Talmadge-Schenck house.”
By then, the jinx had also destroyed the couple’s marriage of thirteen years. Talmadge moved out, as reports swirled that the home was set to be demolished “until there is not a trace of its grandeur remaining except in the minds of those who remember—perhaps superstitiously—its strange spell,” wrote Muir in October 1929. “Several famous ones of filmdom have sought happiness in it and failed to find anything but blasted hopes.”
Once again, 7269 Hollywood was spared the wrecking ball. Schenck, nearing the age of 60, transformed his marital home into a bachelor pad, commissioning architectural firm Walker & Eisen (Ambassador Hotel, Hollywood Plaza Hotel) for a $25,000 remodel that included a new pool and cabana in the rear of the property.
In the summer of 1935, Schenck traveled to Europe and leased the home to Al Wertheimer, a Hollywood gambler who made dramatic changes of his own unbeknownst to the film exec. Wertheimer knocked down several walls and put in a roulette wheel—transforming the historic estate into an underground gambling club. Schenck found out when police raided the place “and he gave me the devil about it,” said Wertheimer.
However, four years later another gambling ring was busted at the premises. Seven men were arrested, yet quickly bailed out by “a mysterious figure who refused to to reveal his identity,” according to the Los Angeles Times in July 1939.
In June 1940, the Twentieth Century-Fox Film chairman was indicted by the federal government on income tax fraud, and as he prepared to fight the charges Schenck liquidated his estate: 7269 Hollywood was sold and everything inside its 20 rooms auctioned including 100 pairs of drapes, 28 walnut occasional tables, 28 table lamps, 18 carved hall chairs, five living room sets, four pairs of marble urns, two grandfather hall chime clocks, oil paintings, mirrors, antiques, dishes, refrigerators, liquor cabinets, and garden tools.
As the Mission Revival mansion was dismantled in September 1940, L.A. Wrecking Co. invited the public to snag its 10,000 pieces: lumber, roof tiles, toilets, tubs, sinks, faucets, windows, doors, water heaters, pipes, and more.
Spared from the demolition were the detached pool cabana and two-story garage/upstairs servants quarters, both of which matched the mansion’s architecture.
The cabana was relocated to 454 N. La Cienega (no longer extant), while the two-bathroom servants quarters moved to 1637 S. Rimpau Boulevard—and miraculously, it still stands today as an 800-square-foot home just north of Venice Boulevard. The red tile roof is undeniable, even if it has seen far better days.
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