Find out why the dated Mommie Dearest Mansion is listed for such a high price

Just imagine all the fun you’d have reliving the famed wire hanger scene, or re-enacting that fiercely competitive mother-daughter swim competition in the very Mommie Dearest mansion where the epic Joan Crawford biopic starring Faye Dunaway was shot! The fame, the glory, the camp, can all be yours for a mere $35 million.

That high price may be a bit of a head scratcher, especially since the property was developed in 1939 and hasn’t changed much since then. But when you consider the fact that it’s located in the most chic part of Holmby Hills, just a stone’s throw from where the  Playboy mansion just sold for $105 million. The former Spelling mansion, which heiress Petra Ecclestone purchased in 2011 for a reported $150 million, is right up the street.

“We call it Billionaires’ Row, because you almost have to be a billionaire, or close to it, to be able to afford one of these amazing luxury estates,” listing agent Christophe Choo of Christophe Choo Luxury Real Estate, as quoted in a feature I wrote for Realtor.com. Located on South Mapleton Drive, Choo says this street “has long been considered one of the finest streets in Los Angeles and the West Coast, if not the entire United States.”

So what will you get if you purchase the estate that was built for prominent filmmaker Allan Dwan, who founded one of the first motion picture studios in Los Angeles and directed Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, among many other cinema stars of the era? Original Palladian mirrors and windows, French doors, antique marble fireplace, rolling lawns, and full-size tennis court. The main residence has six bedrooms and five bathrooms, and sits on a 1.66-acre lot.

Movie buffs will recognize the grand, sweeping staircase that Dunaway swanned up and down in the 1981 film. An almost identical copy of the interior of the Mommie Dearest mansion was built on the Paramount lot, where most of the interior scenes were shot, including the infamous wire hanger scene.

And although it’s an architectural classic with a cinematic pedigree, it’s being marketed as an “opportunity to build your own dream estate and design whatever you want, or reconfigure this existing 1930s traditional Colonial-style home,” according to Choo. Reading between the lines, he’s almost calling it a tear-down. Or at least a major rebuild.

If you should go that route, you could re-enact another famous Mommie Dearest scene, and you won’t even need to know how to swing an ax!

Own the Mommie Dearest Mansion — for Only $35 Million

by Lisa Johnson Mandell

Find out more and see related stories in my feature on Realtor.com.