8191, 8193, 8195 & 8197 Fountain Ave., West Hollywood, CA
If any Hollywood abode ought to be haunted it would be this sprawling series of luxury apartments just off La Cienega Blvd. in today's West Hollywood and once belonging to British film star James Mason and his then-wife Pamela. Suicidal Italian import Pier Angeli lived at the El Palacio when she first came to Hollywood in the very early 1950s, around the same time, in fact, that Marilyn Monroe briefly shared an apartment here with her lesbian acting coach Natasha Lytess. In 1965 the complex became the scene of an actual suicide when the beautiful African-American star Dorothy Dandridge killed herself in her apartment, and in 2007, the equally troubled starlet Lindsay Lohan purchased Natasha Lytess' former abode, apartment F, for a reported $2 million+.
But El Palacios most notorious inhabitant is undoubtedly oil heiress Georgette Bauerdorf, whose October 12, 1944 murder here remains unsolved. Miss Bauerdorf, who dreamed of a career in motion pictures, worked at the famous Hollywood Canteen at 1451 Cahuenga Blvd. where she and other beauties in and out of the acting profession danced with visiting GIs just before the latter were shipped overseas. Returning home after a long evening of jitterbugging, Georgette was apparently retiring for bed when surprised by an intruder who strangled her, raped her just before or just after she died, and dumped her half-dressed body in the bathtub. Considering the amount of untouched jewelry and even cash in the apartment, a robbery scenario seemed unlikely, and it was speculated that the victim may indeed have known her killer. In more recent years, several authors have sought to connect the slaying of Georgette Bauerdorf with the equally unsolved butchering in 1947 of Elizabeth Short, aka the Black Dahlia. Not all too convincingly I might add.
Georgette Bauerdorf
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