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  • Completed in 1946 on Lot 6 in Tract 7040 (Tract 7040 was a re-subdivision of Tract 6388; 7040's Lot 6 was originally Lot 177 of Tract 6388)
  • Original commissioner: Louis S. Marches, an aspiring actor, accountant, dress manufacturer, and auctioneer
  • Architect: Ralph S. Loring
  • On November 16, 1945, the Deaprtment of Building and Safety issued Louis S. Marches a permit for an 11-room house with attached garage at 605 South Hudson Avenue. On September 24, 1947, Marches was issued a permit for a 20-by-36-foot swimming pool on the property
  • Born Luigi Marchesano on October 26, 1907, Louis Marches arrived in Los Angeles from his native Philadelphia by 1938 as an aspiring singer hoping to break into movies. His occupation on that year's voter roll was given as "accountant"; Marches was wise to carry on with off-camera work though he did indeed become, according to his World War II draft registration, a member of the Screen Actors Guild, with the 1940 census tabulating him as an actor in motion pictures. While waiting for his elusive big break in Hollywood, Marches's wife Eileen—they'd married in Philadelphia in 1928 and had a daughter, Antoniette, and a son, John—worked as a wholesale milliner. The family had come west having done well enough to buy a duplex on La Mirada Avenue in Hollywood, which they converted to a three-family building; the Marches lived there with his mother and stepfather and two nephews. Eileen gave birth to William in August 1941. That year's Los Angeles city directory refers to Louis as a "singer," the 1942 directory as a "studio worker." An item in Women's Wear Daily on March 5, 1943, announced that Louis had opened a clothing factory on East Ninth Street and had begun making women's and juniors' skirts and slacks. Calling the firm "Marches of Hollywood," Marches was one way or another going to be connected screen magic. The business seems to have done well in its early years; by late 1945 Marches had bought a lot in Hancock Park and begun building 605 South Hudson Avenue
  • Louis Marches did himself no favors in the garment business and seems to have flamed out before the end of the '40s. In October 1946 the National Labor Relations Board was recommending that Marches be restained from interfering with the right of his employees to unionize. In February 1949, curious small display advertisements appeared in the Times in which Marches presented himself as an auctioneer. An ad on February 20 announced the sale of a "complete garment plant" on South Maple Avenue; one on the 27th offered a "complete restaurant with building" in Hollywood. Marches seems to have been sliding deep into debt and it appears, fraud; the family's hold on 605 South Hudson was becoming tenuous
  • The Marcheses' personal life became no less complicated than their business arrangements. Their daughter had eloped to Tijuana with rising Hollywood actor Richard Jaeckel in May 1947, their two sons arriving in short order. Occupying the Hudson Avenue house, per the 1950 Federal census—the enumerator of which was rather careless—were "Lewis," "Ilene," "Antett Jeckel," Richard "Jackel," Jaeckel sons Richard and Barry, and John and William Marches. (The enumerator also gave their address as "601" South Hudson rather than the correct 605)


Richard Jaeckel and Terry Moore warming up for a scene in the 1952 film
Come Back, Little Sheba. His wife divorced him in February 1953.


  • Richard Jaeckel was in the midst of his rise in a long and prolific career as a character actor in film. His father, a New York furrier, had opened a Hollywood branch in 1934, moving his family there from Park Avenue. Richard Jaeckel Sr. was saved by the canopy of his brother's New York apartment building after jumping from the 10th floor in February 1940; he was successful in committing suicide in July 1941 when he fell from the 21st story of a Chicago hotel to a crowded Michigan Avenue sidewalk. He appears by then to have been separated from his wife Millicent, a one-time stage actress, who in January 1946 would elope with film pioneer Waterson Rothacker, 21 years her senior. Rothacker had opened a large film processing laboratory in Chicago in 1910, moving it to Hollywood 11 years later, where it grew even bigger. Rothacker became a producer; it seems likely that he was able to open some doors for his stepson after 17-year-old Jaeckel, working in the mailroom at 20th Century–Fox, was persuaded to take a screen test in 1943. He would appear that year in Fox's Guadalcanal Diary. Jaeckel, whose name appeared frequently in Louella Parsons's column, was featured alongside Shirley Booth, Burt Lancaster, and Terry Moore in 1952's Come Back, Little Sheba in a part that highlighted his blond heat, compact, muscular form, and confident demeanor. The Rothackers' marriage was rocky; 14 months after their wedding, Millicent left her husband, though they appear to still have been married when he died in 1960. Richard and Antoinette Jaeckel hit their own rocks; they were divorced in February 1953 amid the financial vicissitudes of her parents that had resulted in the sale of 605 South Hudson Avenue in 1951. (One can't help but wonder if the onscreen chemistry between Jaeckel and Terry Moore might have been part of the divorce equation.) The Jaeckels would remarry; she and their sons would survive him when he died at 70 on June 14, 1997
  • On November 7, 1948, 14-month-old Richard Jaeckel Jr. was found floating face down in the swimming pool at 605 South Hudson in what the Times reported was two feet of water; his uncle, John Marches rescued him
  • It seems that Louis Marches was leading something of a double life. A second enumeration in the 1950 Federal census has Louis Marches living in Los Angeles with Grace Marches and her seven-year-old son Billy, né William Paul Egnatoff, he having been named after his maternal grandparents, William and Pauline Tolmachoff, farmers who lived in Arizona. Louis is cited in that census as being associated with the "Maple Dress Factory." Louis, Grace, and Billy had also been enumerated with the Tolmachoffs in Maricopa County outside of Phoenix in the 1950 census, though the lines containing their information had been struck through; Louis was noted as the Tolmachoff's son-in-law on that document. A legal case in 1954 describes how Marches apparently attempted to fraudulently assign to Grace certain property in order to avoid garnishment owning to his indebtedness
  • Louis Marches moved to an apartment on North Oxford Avenue, sans both wife and faux wife. Somehow Eileen landed on her feet and was able to stay in Hancock Park. On February 3, 1953, her son John was issued a permit for a seven-room house at 285 South Rossmore Avenue, at the northwest corner of Third Street, where she lived for many years. (That property would be acquired by Marlborough School and is today a parking lot)
  • Shoe manufacturer Philip Aronov, né Feiwel Aronovsky before his 1936 naturalization, was the owner of 605 South Hudson Avenue by the fall of 1951. Aronov, who was unmarried, appears to have moved into 605 with his bachelor brothers Charles and Morris and his divorced sister Pauline, all of whom were working for the family firm. On October 15, 1951, Philip Aronov was issed a permit by the Department of Building and Safety for additions. The siblings appear to have left 605 by 1960
  • Ownership and occupancy of 605 South Hudson Avenue during the 1960s and '70 is unclear. There were various sales of the property during the serious real estate doldrums affecting Hancock Park in the wake of the Watts Rebellion  and Manson murders; the house was on the market in June of 1968 for $119,500. For two years from the spring of 1973, 605 South Hudson was advertised for sale with ads calling it an estate sale—"must sacrifice." One asking price given during this period of advertising was $245,000
  • Los Angeles real estate developer and philanthropist Jack Nagel was the owner of 605 South Hudson Avenue by 1982. Nagel carried out additions and remodelings in the late 1980s and appears to have replaced the 1947 pool with a new one
  • By the 2000s Hancock Park's central-city vulnerability to crime was largely being ignored; the neighborhood was well on its way to being rediscovered as a more affordable alternative to the Westside when 605 South Hudson Avenue was placed on the market in August 2004. With the district's upswing, the asking price of $2,650,000 was, ironically, too low. The house sat at that price. Interestingly, the $2,795,000 being asked for it in May 2005 did not turn the trick; nearly a year later, the price had climbed again to $2,895,000. The house reached its sweet spot when it sold for $2,800,000 on Aug 31, 2007


Illustrations: Private Collection; Paramount Pictures