As Europe’s artistic luminaries flocked to Los Angeles after Hitler came to power in 1933, they found themselves in a thriving, if sometimes incongruous, cultural landscape. Drawn by the climate, Hollywood industry and the promise of creative freedom, they purchased homes in Beverly Hills and on the mountainous lanes of Laurel Canyon. They rubbed shoulders with movie moguls and starlets. They learned how to drive and play tennis.
The writer Thomas Mann dubbed this environment ‘German California’. It was where Schoenberg and philosopher Theodor Adorno met up while grocery shopping, where Stravinsky discussed a film project on Charlie Chaplin’s patio, and where Rachmaninov applied his large hands to gardening.
Brentwood
Arnold Schoenberg
116 North Rockingham Avenue
A faculty post at UCLA in 1936 prompted Arnold Schoenberg and his wife Gertrud to buy this Spanish revival house in leafy Brentwood, just across the street from Shirley Temple. Musicians came from and his Piano Concerto here, sometimes between rounds of tennis with George Gershwin and Harpo Marx. His athletic son Ronnie became a junior tennis champion and, to his father’s annoyance, the more famous Schoenberg at the local tennis club.
