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  • Built in 1923 on Lot 29 in Tract 3819
  • Original commissioner: Chisholm & Meikle as a speculative project; Alexander D. Chisholm and Evan L. Meikle had recently formed their contracting, building, and real estate development firm. The two initial permits for the house—one for a 14-room residence and one for a 20-by-40-foot one-story garage—were issued by the Department of Buildings on July 6, 1923, citing Chisholm & Meikle as the owner. On July 15, the Los Angeles Times ran a large rendering of the building, noting that Chisholm & Meikle was building the house for William H. Fortine, until recently an oil-drilling contractor based in Mexico. By the end of the year, Fortine, aparently wishing to disassociate himself from the scandal-ridden oil industry, had joined Chisholm and Meikle to form Chisholm, Fortine & Meikle, which would become responsible for a number of other residences in Hancock Park, Windsor Square, and Fremont Place during the 1920s
  • Architect: Clarence J. Smale, who had just opened his own firm; one of his design partners was Lewis E. Blaize, who is cited in the July 15, 1923, Times description of 543 Muirfield as having collaborated on the design of the house


As seen in the Los Angeles Times on July 15, 1923


  • The first owner of 543 Muirfield Road was a famous one; on October 19, 1924, the Times noted Chisholm, Fortine & Meikle's sale of the house the prior week to silent superstar Buster Keaton for $75,000 ($1,216,000 in 2021). Keaton and his actress wife Natalie Talmadge rented 59 Westmoreland Place soon after they were married on May 31, 1921; the couple bought 637 South Ardmore Avenue in January 1923, owning it for just 10 months; after managing to make a considerable profit by selling it for $85,000, they moved on to 543 Muirfield Road—yet another stop before Buster built his famous Beverly Hills house, completed in 1926, in a fruitless effort to please his notoriously avaricious wife. On May 19, 1925, the Los Angeles Evening Express noted Keaton's sale of 543 to Mrs. Elizabeth J. Milham for $80,000




Buster Keaton's purchase of 543 Muirfield Road
was reported prominently in the Times on October 19,
 1924. Over the years, real estate interests would make hay
of the silent star's ownership of the house, with commercial
 interests also sometimes trying to capitalize on its brief
Hollywood cred, as in the Times on March 29, 1925.



  • Elizabeth J. Milham was the widow of Frank Hickman Milham, a Kalamazoo paper manufacturer who died in Pasadena in May 1921; he had also served as Kalamazoo's mayor from 1908 to 1909. The Milhams had been visiting Southern California regularly; their daughter Eleanor was living in Los Angeles prior to her mother's purchase of 543 Muirfield Road. The Milhams had a daughter who died of appendicitis at the age of 10 in 1898. Eleanor had been born in 1891; her first husband died in an automobile accident in Kalamazoo in July 1917. After Eleanor married again 15 months later, the couple moved to Los Angeles; he died "after a long illness" in June 1922. Two months later, Eleanor married a third time, she and Herbert E. Floercky living at various addresses in the Wilshire District including 98 Fremont Place
  • Elizabeth and Frank Milham appear to have adopted a son by 1920; he appears with his parents as Donald J. Milham in the 1920 Federal census, age 8. Curiously, it wasn't until October 1938 that he filed a petition to become a naturalized American citizen, signing the document as "Donald Frederick Griswold," his nativity given as October 8, 1911, in Nova Scotia
  • Elizabeth Milham tried to sell 543 Muirfield Road in the spring of 1931 as the Depression deepened, a classified ad in the Times on May 26 referred to it as "The Best Buy in the Finest Part of Los Angeles" but did not specify an asking price. There were no takers. Apparently to raise cash, Mrs. Milham auctioned off much of the contents 543 at the nadir of the Depression; an advertisement in the Times on June 4, 1933, for the event to be held in the house three days later described the house as "Better known as the former home of Buster Keaton" and carried the curious notation that the owner was "leaving for Canada." Another tagline read "House for sale or may rent reasonable," but the 10-year-old property would for the time being remain a white elephant, one of many in only-just-maturing Hancock Park


As seen in the Times on June 4, 1933

   
  • Mrs. Milham and Donald lived at 543 Murifield Road until leaving for an apartment in a fourplex on South Hobart Boulevard in 1936. The house was being advertised in the Times in the fall of 1936 as a "Hancock Park Sacrifice," though no price was specified
  • Max Hartfield, milliner, clothier, and real estate investor moved into 543 Muirfield Road by 1937. Hartfield had arrived in Los Angeles by 1915, first entering the theater business and then opening the Hy-Class Hat Company on Broadway with a partner (this later became known as Paulus & Hartfield). He and his brothers Bernard and Leo would go on to operate mid-market millinery and ladies'-wear shops downtown and in Hollywood, Santa Monica, and Long Beach, among other locations, those headed by Max being known as the Mayson Shops. Max Hartfield and his wife Elizabeth had four daughters; Gertrude's wedding to Harvard-trained lawyer Preston Jerome Kline took place at 543 on October 15, 1940. Moving to Beverly Hills, the Hartfields left 543 by 1944
  • George Drexel McDonald, his wife Virginia, and two daughters were in possession of 543 Muirfield Road by mid 1944. McDonald was born George McDonald Looney in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1898; by 1910 he was living in Los Angeles with his mother and several of his six siblings at the home of Mrs. Looney's brother, Oscar P. Trigg, an accountant working on the new aqueduct. For reasons that are unclear, Mrs. Looney and several of her children, including George, changed their surnames to McDonald in the early 1920s, George adding "Drexel" perhaps simply to add some eastern cachet. (He and his own family to come would rarely be mentioned, even in city directories, without it.) George, who became an accountant for an oil company, did well for himself socially. On October 1, 1932, he married Virginia Patterson Callender at her family's house at 514 South Windsor Boulevard. Virginia's father was the late Los Angeles real estate developer Harry R. Callender
  • The McDonalds—the George Drexel McDonalds, that is—were another Hancock Park couple who appeared regularly in social columns; their annual Christmas party was said to "always [be] a social highlight of the season." During the mid-1950s, George's sister Alice Daniels and her husband Charles appear to have lived with the McDonalds at 543. Among the family's well-covered last blasts at 543 Muirfield was the wedding reception of daughter Marilyn on June 8, 1957—she had attended Berkeley Hall, Marlborough, and U.S.C. and was a Las Madrinas debutante of two years before, this being a top-drawer thing in Los Angeles. The house was already on the market by the time Mrs. McDonald gave a bridal tea for the daughter of friends on May 8, 1958. The McDonalds would soon be moving to 709 Devon Avenue in Westwood
  • George Franklin Getty II, eldest grandson of the founder of the legendary Getty oil business, moved into 543 Muirfield Road in the summer of 1958, apparently renting it. Fifty years before, his grandfather built 647 South Kingsley Drive at the northwest corner of Wilshire Boulevard, where his father, J. Paul Getty, had grown up. On September 8, 1958, social diarist Christy Fox reported in the Times that Mrs. Getty was about to move down from Atherton and into 543 with the couple's children, who were starting new schools. "George Getty follows later when the Tidewater Building is completed and the home office settles here. He's [the] new president, you know." The Gettys left 543 within a few years, moving two blocks west to 613 South Hudson Avenue. The Tidewater Building replaced the William O. Jenkins house at 641 South Irving Boulevard; in an aggressive, megalomaniacal bid to acquire the entire square block between Irving and Lorraine boulevards from Wilshire north to Sixth Street, and more, J. Paul Getty, in the guise of Tidewater—later known as Getty Oil—wound up with 605 South Irving in 1959. Seventeen years later, two months before he died, he named that house in memory of his eldest son George and donated it to the city for use as the official mayor's residence. George and Gloria Getty had been divorced in January 1968; he remarried in 1971 but committed suicide two years later 
  • The family of John F. O'Grady, a building-products executive, bought 543 Muirfield Road in 1962 and would stay for 27 years. O'Grady was president of the Urethane Corporation of California when he moved into 543 and later became involved in modular housing. The house came on the market in late 1988; with a broker once again trading on its scant seven-month Hollywood heritage, advertisements in the Times claimed that 543 was "Built in 1923 [sic] by movie star Buster Keaton" and cited an asking price of $1,800,000
  • The O'Gradys and their immediate successors appear to have done little to alter 543 Muirfield during their tenure; an owner by 2007 added a 13-by-40-foot swimming pool and carried out interior remodelings in 2010 and 2017. Curiously, the pool has been removed by the most recent owner, who has also made small additions to the rear of the house and added a garden feature and solar equipment




As advertised in the Times on November 12, 1988, a real
estate broker couldn't resist pushing a silent star's seven-month
ownership over 60 years earlier. During the golden age of Hollywood,
postcard publishers followed the house moves of stars to the minute; one
of 543 Muirfield Road during Buster and Natalie's tenure came in
between similar cards depicting their house on Ardmore
Avenue and their "Italian Villa" in Beverly Hills.




Illustrations: Private Collection; LAT