Step Aside, Chris Pine: This House Is the Hottest Character in 'I Am the Night'
There's nothing Hollywood loves more than a villain in a well-designed house. Case in point: an art publisher once put out a zine titled Evil People in Modernist Homes in Popular Films. But the creators of I Am the Night weren't just trying to create dramatic effect when they shot Black Dahlia suspect George Hodel in the John Sowden House. They were just showing the man as he lived: in a really crazy house.
Reviews of the Chris Pine-lead show have been mixed, but it's hard not to love L.A.'s iconic Sowden House. In all honesty, we haven't seen a scene-stealing performance like this in quite some time. The drama! The intrigue! The one-point perspective!
The home was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright's son, Lloyd Wright, for his friend John Sowden back in 1926-and as the house's website notes, it was made to party. John and Ruth Sowden were Hollywood scenesters, and hired Lloyd Wright in part because of his experience making movie sets.
In 1945, the property landed in the hands of Dr. George Hodel, a high-end doctor with an elite social circle, including photographer Man Ray and director John Huston, according to Curbed. Hodel would later become infamous for his suspected, but never proven, involvement in the 1947 murder of actress Elizabeth Short-known as the Black Dahlia.
According to his son Steve Hodel, who published his investigations in 2003's Black Dahlia Avenger, George Hodel allegedly murdered people in the basement of Sowden House. And in I Am the Night, the fictionalized George Hodel (played by Jefferson Mays) couldn't be surrounded by a more apropos set.
Steve Hodel described the effect of the house in his book. "Growing up in that house, my brothers and I saw it as a place of magic that we were convinced could easily have greeted the uninvited with pits of fire, poison darts, deadly snakes, or even a giant sword-bearing turbaned bodyguard at the door," he wrote, per Curbed.
Sowden House's current occupants, Dan Goldfarb and Jenny Landers, have a very different take. "It is extremely open, airy, and spacious inside," Goldfarb tells Town & Country. "The entire house flows via an open central courtyard that allows us to enjoy the LA weather year-round, open to the air and sky... It is a very private oasis, in a completely unexpected place."
The couple has a unique way of warding off any lingering juju from George Hodel. "We have these amazing Persian cats and if any bad spirits arrive, they would keep them at bay," Goldfarb explained to The Hollywood Reporter.
Goldfarb made his fortune with Canna-Pet, a hemp-based supplement for pets inspired by the needs of his own Persian cat, Mariano. "Mariano is the reason we are here," Goldfarb told T&C. And since moving in to the spacious Sowden House, Goldfarb and Landers have been able to acquire many more kitties.
"Right now we have eight cats," Goldfarb says. "They are all Persians, and they are all rescue cats. "The cats roam freely throughout enjoy the sun and birds in the courtyard."
That description seems about right, based on the many cat-centric photos Goldfarb sent T&C. They were all taken by Goldfarb himself, and he assured us that "there are plenty more too," should T&C need them.
"The cats have some secret places where they can go when things get too wild here," he says. "Mariano has a fairly large private office, for example, hidden behind a secret wall."
So, some secrets do persist at Sowden House-if more cat-based than expected.
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