It probably had a lot to do with the prevailing fear of nuclear obliteration at almost any time. The offshoot was the feeling that, since we weren’t going to be here for very much longer, let’s have fun while we can.
Not that the West Coast didn’t already have a proclivity for the oddball and weird – this new Atomic Age brought along with it a sense of awe along with a sense of awful.
And nowhere was this more prevalent than in the area of architecture and design. Everything from office buildings to towels was imbued with a certain sense of adventure and the future, no matter how potentially uncomfortable it professed to be; we were going places.
One of the biggest examples of this “space age run amok” was in the architectural designs of Hal B. Hayes. The crowning achievement; a multi-story bachelor pad nestled in the Hollywood Hills and boasting the ability to withstand a nuclear attack, made its debut in 1953 – and immediately became something of a sensation, even in jaundiced old Hollywood.
To quote WeHo Online:
When attending an engagement at the home of Hal Braxton Hayes in the hills above West Hollywood, one entered through the orchid grotto — a multi-story, glass-walled atrium, with the stairs carved into an artificial coral cliff of spray-applied “Gunite” fireproof concrete.
A quick look back at your car would show you that it was parked on metal rails that slid out to cantilever over the side of a mountain-supporting retaining wall. It hung over the steep driveway that connects to Sierra Alta Way below—a “space-saving measure.”
The stair led up and out of the orchids, through a lush canyon of dense jungle-like foliage. The stair was flanked by two large and aggressively twisted statues (representations of war and death) that had been sculpted in the same rough concrete by the owner himself.
At the next plateau, there was an artificial sandy beach, with a pool, palm trees and topless starlets sunbathing. Just visible under the surface of the water there was a tunnel. Swimming through to the tunnel, you would emerge in a bombproof hideaway, stocked with food, drinking water and oxygen tanks.
The beach-banked pool extended into the living room of the house itself (the underwater escape route always accessible), as did the jungle. The branches of one particularly large tree reached up through the roof and, by way of a painful-looking graft, a television protruded from the trunk. The lighting was all voice activated, and at the bar, built-in faucets dispensed scotch, bourbon and champagne.
The debut of the house in 1953 was major news in Hollywood – celebrated Columnist and reporter George Fisher gave a vivid description of that first while and swinging affair in his broadcast of August 2, 1953.
Along with other Hollywood gossip of the day, the standout is the Party At Hal’s Atomic Party House in 1953.
