Last May, the Harden House Estate in Rancho Palos Verdes, California was sold for a reported $4.28 million dollars. In the time since, much of the garden area has been bulldozed and many trees have been removed, creating a vast expanse of barren land on which something else will presumably be erected.
Why do we care about this? Because the Harden House Estate (aka The Harden Gatehouse) was a key filming location in the fave movie of this blog's proprietor. It doubled as Santa Rosita State Park in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. This is where the "Big W" was located.
The four slanted palm trees that formed the "Big W" haven't been there for a long time. Most of the foliage and trees that made up the park were planted there for the filming and most of that endured until the bulldozers arrived…but the "W" was long gone. One tree fell down, then another, then another, etc. — and that shouldn't have come as a shock. They were planted in that unusual manner just for the movie and never expected to last forever.
Often I've written about the film here, I've received messages from people asking me where that park is located and can they go visit it? It's always been a private residence with owners who would only occasionally allow visitors in — I never even tried — but now there's nothing to see there. And as noted in this post, another important location from that film is disappearing — this week, I believe.
Sad…but inevitable. At the moment, the most memorable thing in Mad World that's still standing is Jerry Lewis.