Last evening around 6:30 pm Tatiana and I embarked on another steep uphill hike. Yes, despite the heat. It was primarily for exercise, but our goal was the gates of Bella Vista, John Barrymore‘s sprawling, perfectly landscaped, Spanish colonial hilltop home at 1500 Seabright Place.

We began at the corner of Lexington Ave. and North Crescent. Due west, right on Hartford, up Benedict Canyon, right on Tower Road and then up, up, up to Tower Grove Drive and beyond. Panting, perspiring, wheezing, groaning.

The visit was more or less inspired by Drew Barrymore having confirmed a couple of days ago that following her grandfather’s alcohol-related death in 1942, his body was indeed stolen from a morgue by W.C. Fields, Errol Flynn and Sadakichi Hartmann “so that they could prop him up against a poker table and throw one last party with the guy”, according to an interview transcript.