Where'd You Go, Bernadette(32)

It was ’92, and there was talk of green architecture, but this was before LEED, before the Green Building Council, a decade before Dwell. Sure, environmental architecture had been around for decades, but beauty wasn’t a priority.

My friend from Chicago came out with a big group. No doubt they expected some ugly-ass yurt made out of license plates and tires. But when they walked into the Twenty Mile House, they started laughing, that’s how gorgeous it was. A sparkling glass box with clean lines, not an inch of drywall or paint. The floors were concrete; the walls and ceiling, wood; the counters, exposed aggregate with bits of broken glass for translucent color. Even with all those warm materials, it felt lighter inside than outside.

That day, Bernadette was building the garage, pouring concrete into forms and doing tilt-up walls. The MacArthur guys took off their suit jackets, rolled up their sleeves, and helped. That’s when I knew she’d won it.





Receiving this recognition enabled Fox to let go of the Twenty Mile House and put it on the market.

JUDY TOLL: Bernadette told me she wanted to list the house and look for another piece of property without a shared driveway. Having Nigel Mills-Murray next door was very good for her property values. I snapped some pictures and told her I’d run some comps.

When I got to my office, I had a message on my answering machine. It was from a business manager I worked with often, who had heard the house was for sale. I told him we wouldn’t be listing it for a couple of months, but he was an architecture buff and wanted to own the house that won the “Genius award.”

We ate at Spago to celebrate, me, Bernadette, and her darling husband. You should have seen the two of them. He was so proud of her. She had just won a big award and made a killing on the house. What husband wouldn’t be proud? During dessert, he took out a little box and gave it to Bernadette. Inside was a silver locket with a yellow photograph inside, of a severe and disturbed-looking girl.

“It’s Saint Bernadette,” Elgie said. “Our Lady of Lourdes. She had visions, eighteen in all. You had your first vision with Beeber Bifocal. You had your second vision with the Twenty Mile House. Here’s to sixteen more.”

Bernadette started crying. I started crying. He started crying. The three of us were in a puddle when the waiter came with the check.

At that lunch, that’s when they decided to go to Europe. They wanted to see Lourdes, home of Saint Bernadette. It was all just so sweet. They had the whole world ahead of them.

Bernadette still needed to get the house photographed for her portfolio. If she waited a month, it would give the garden time to fill in. So she decided to do it after they returned. I called the buyer and asked if this was acceptable. He said, Yes, of course.





PAUL JELLINEK: Everyone thinks I was so close to Bernadette, but I really didn’t talk to her all that much. It was the fall and I had a new group of students. I wanted to show them the Twenty Mile House. I knew Bernadette had gone to Europe. Still, I did what I always did, left a message to say I’d be stopping by the Twenty Mile house with my class. I had a key.

I turned off of Mulholland and saw that Bernadette’s gate was open, which was the first weird thing. I drove up and got out of my car. It took me a second to understand what I was seeing: a bulldozer was demolishing the house! Three bulldozers, actually, pushing into walls, breaking glass, crunching beams, just smashing and flattening the furniture, lights, windows, cabinets. It was so fucking loud, which made it more confusing.

I had no idea what was going on. I didn’t even know she’d sold the house. I ran up to one of the bulldozers and literally pulled the guy off and screamed at him, “What the hell are you doing?” But he didn’t speak English.

There were no cell phones back then. I had my students form a chain in front of the bulldozers, then I drove as fast as I could to Hollywood Boulevard, to the nearest pay phone. I called Bernadette and got her answering machine. “What the hell are you doing?” I screamed into it. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. You don’t just go off to Europe and destroy your house!”





Jellinek wasn’t at the office two weeks later when Fox left the following message, which he still has, and he plays for me. “Paul,” says a woman’s voice. “What’s going on? What are you talking about? We’re back. Call me.” Fox then called her realtor.

JUDY TOLL: She asked if anything was wrong with the house. I told her I didn’t know if Nigel had done anything with it. She said, “Who?” I said, “Nigel.” Again, she said, “Who?!” but this time she shrieked it. I said, “The gentleman who bought your house. Your neighbor, Nigel, with the television show where they drop expensive things from a ladder and if you catch it, you keep it. He’s English.”

“Wait a second,” Bernadette said. “A friend of yours named John Sayre bought my house.”

Then I realized, of course, she didn’t know! While she was in Europe, the business manager had me transfer title over to Nigel Mills-Murray. I had no idea, but the business manager was buying it for his client, Nigel Mills-Murray. That happens all the time, celebrities buy houses in the names of their business managers and then transfer title. For privacy, you know.

“Nigel Mills-Murray was the buyer all along,” I told Bernadette.

There was silence, and then she hung up the phone.