Late Photographer Melvin Sokolsky’s Beverly Hills Home Hits the Market for $7 Million
What do Mia Farrow, Natalie Wood, Twiggy and Ricardo Montalbán’s iconic “Corinthian leather” ads for Chrysler in the 1970s have in common? Melvin Sokolsky, the late, great and wildly imaginative surrealist fashion photographer and acclaimed TV commercial director who not only made portraits of some of Hollywood’s biggest stars and created innovative fashion shoots for Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue and The New York Times, but hoovered up 25 Clio Awards for his many advertising gigs along the way.
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In the 1970s, the native New Yorker was based on the West Coast where he acquired a secluded English Country-style cottage in the foothills of Benedict Canyon in Beverly Hills. Now, two years after his death at the age of 88, his beloved private sanctuary is being sold by his son Bing Sokolsky for just under $7 million. The boomerang-shaped hillside home, originally built in 1939 and designed by artist and architect Frederic Barienbrock for a silent screen actress, according to marketing material, is listed with Susan Andrews and Martin Withrow of Compass.
A quick one-mile hop from The Beverly Hills Hotel and tucked into the southern shadow of Michael Ovitz’s avant garde mansion, the self-taught snapper’s residence is hidden behind iron gates at the end of a sleepy cul-de-sac. Far less theatrical than some of his more memorable fashion shoots, such as those in which models appear suspended above Paris in translucent spheres, the home is imbued with a relaxed traditional style.
There are, however, many elements throughout the five-bedroom and three-and-a-half-bath home’s 3,400 square feet that speak to Sokolsky’s expansive imagination. Among them are a ceiling painted like a lightly cloudy sky in the foyer and a mural-lined powder room inspired by Edgar Degas.
The living room has a baronial stone fireplace and built-in bookshelves; the dining room has a stunning view of the Century City skyline poking above the treetops; and the kitchen sports rustic wood counters and commercial-grade appliances. Like the living room, a cozy, wood-paneled study with a fireplace opens to a covered terrace that runs along the back of the house with sunrise to sunset vistas.
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Bedrooms are tucked down onto the lower level. There are two small bedrooms and a shared bath accessible by their own staircase just off the kitchen, while another staircase leads from the foyer down to an ample pair of en suite bedrooms that flank a library that’s convertible to another bedroom. The larger bedroom suite, the primary, includes a spacious modern bath and a huge walk-in closet, plus a separate dressing room.
The two larger bedrooms spill onto a large brick terrace, and the 18,000-square-foot hillside parcel also includes a sunny lower terrace with an elegant, though not currently filled, oval swimming pool.
Click here for more photos of the Beverly Hills Home.
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