‘Color Purple’ composer Allee Willis’ bubble-gum-pink wonderland in Valley Village
By Audrey Davidow
For the unsuspecting visitor, musician and artist Allee Willis’ bubble-gum-pink house in
“The pool was put in in 1976, before I moved in. Everything else in the back I designed and built myself with one or two other people helping me. I have a total of 32 chaises and chairs out there, mostly from the ‘50s, some from the ‘60s and some from the ‘70s.†(Christina House / For The Times)
“When in doubt, I just put your footprints in. There’s a separate light in the pool that changes colors at different speeds. And I can also time bubbles to come up from the bottom of the pool. So between the bubbles and the changing colors, it’s pretty wild out there.†(Christina House / For the Times)
“I designed the lawn for my dog that did tricks. I wanted to build her all these little paths so that she could do her tricks. I had seen colored concrete, and I thought, wouldn’t it be great if the whole backyard was a beach? So I painted the concrete blue, so that it kind of looked like continuous water, and then I hauled in — I don’t even remember how many tons of sand — so that I would have my own beach. Anything that is not grass or concrete is sand. I had to get the right grain sand — Basilica white, No. 30 — so as not to have a sand-blasted house when the wind comes.†(Christina House / For The Times)
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“The Riverside Market sign is the oldest piece of neon in the Valley. It came from the Riverside Market, which was on the corner of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Riverside Drive. When the building was ripped down in 1989 — which is blasphemy — I inherited the neon. The bar is made out of a Buick bumper, DeSoto hubcaps, a bowling ball, and wood and wrought iron. It’s such an old piece for me, but no one ever walks in that backyard without commenting on it. It’s an unbelievable bar at parties. It’s long, it’s totally sturdy. It’s the hot spot at my parties. People hang out by that thing all the time.†(Christina House / For The Times)
“I had been collecting all this atomic furniture and atomic and kitsch artifacts forever, and the living room is just an incredible place to house it. It’s got 20-foot ceilings. It’s the greatest room in the world to record vocals in, because it sounds like a church. Everything in the house is either vintage or made by me. I don’t care about famous designers. Everyone says, ‘Oh, do you have Eames or do you have Aalto?’ The answer is yes, but I could barely tell you which ones they were. I’m into something because of the spirit in which it was made. I could care less about who designed it.†(Christina House / For The Times)
“I made this piece in 1985. I used to sell them. I would get commissioned to make them. I probably sold about 15 of them. It was called the steering wheel table. My father was a scrap dealer in Detroit, so I always collected car parts — in particular, steering wheels from the 1950s cars that were outrageous colors. It just felt like it would make a great table base. One leg is the steering wheel. One of the other legs is a vintage car spring that came out of my 1955 DeSoto. The other leg is a continuation of wrought iron that supports the kidney-shaped glass tabletop. I painted an abstract design on the underside of the glass and glued little vintage photographs on it.†(Christina House / For The Times)
“It’s very much meant to be a table that would be in a modern living room, with lots of people and lots of cocktails around it.†(Christina House / For The Times)
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“It’s the shape of this room that’s unbelievable. There’s really no square rooms in the house. What I love most is the amount of light that floods into it. A lot of people like their bedrooms dark, but I’d work at 500 watts around the clock if I could. The bed was done by a designer named Kim Milligan. He was one of the first people to have a vintage ‘50s and ‘60s store in L.A., a store on Melrose called Cowboys and Poodles. In this day and age, I would never have cowhide. I eat meat, so I’m not all the way, but cowhide was at the high end of ‘50s modern designs. I really wanted that carried out in the bed, and I wanted the bed made out of all vintage materials. Part of the headboard is a vintage, wavy-glass shower door. The grid was a vintage piece of metal Kim had found. Kim and I loved to make stuff out of found objects, so it was really just finding a bunch of objects we agreed to put together in some form and then he just went to town. (Christina House / For The Times)
“In my bedroom, the floor was a little messed up. It had a huge, dark water stain. So I just bought a porthole and cut it into the floor, and now it’s my laundry chute.†(Christina House / For The Times)
“These curtains in my office are from
“In the mid-’80s, I sold quite a few sets of these drawers and matching beds. They’re made out of wood, enamel, paint and vintage car insignias and door handles. This was the prototype of a whole line. The red portable television was made in 1968. I have six of them. That particular one is also a radio, which is very rare, and it’s highly collectible today. The plastic owl is actually a 1950s transistor radio I got at a vintage shop called Lady Peters Whimsy that was on Magnolia Boulevard in the Valley until a couple of years ago. The knobs are the eyes — that’s how you get the stations. I’ve never changed the batteries in that radio since I’ve owned it, which is at least 20-something years, and it still works. The thing never dies.†(Christina House / For The Times)
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“The bathroom light is a 1970s fixture with the five silver globes in it. I got it on EBay. The thing that’s so spectacular is I put different colored bulbs in it, some of which are rainbow bulbs — three different colors in them. How those bulbs reflect make the fixture 10 times better. Because this house was built as a party house for a movie studio, all the bathrooms are small. It was meant as a weekend place.†(Christina House / For The Times)
Willis’ alter ego, Bubbles the artist, created this piece of tile in her shower. (Christina House / For The Times)
“I feel like I have a duty to collect. I never get to ‘Enough is enough.’ †(Christina House / For The Times)
A vintage string holder in Willis’ kitchen. (Christina House / For The Times)
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“I drew those designs for the kitchen floor. Then I found a guy who had laid tile at Radio City when it was built in 1933, and he carved all those designs into the floor. I’ve only found one other person who was that great of a craftsman with linoleum. It’s unbelievably fine work. One design is a television, one’s a face, a Cadillac, a Sputnik, dice, things like that. Linoleum was one of the ultimate materials of atomic design and in the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s. I have those limited-edition Nikes in all different colors. They were out for only three months in 2001. I guess those are my favorites.†(Christina House / For The Times)
The rec room: “That floor was done by a brilliant artist named Laurie Crogan. It’s a hand-carved linoleum floor. I really wanted singing sea life, because that room is sunken. When you’re in that room, the sidewalk outside is already at your waist level. Because I had the blue pavement outside, I wanted it to feel like a continuation inside. It’s a type of linoleum called VST; it’s used in airports and other high-traffic areas. I wanted the fish singing, because I write music and I just thought that if I could have all these happy fish and whales and octopuses singing, that that would be good.†(Christina House / For The Times)
“I restored the whole house with a guy named Mark Tomorsky. Over the years we‘ve gone through the rooms, one by one, and tried to put things back to the original. In the rec room room we found dead space behind one of the panels, so I ended up moving the walls back. We also discovered there was a false floor, so I was able to lower the room another 9 inches and get back to the original floor. Everything’s a canvas — whether it’s my house, my body or my front lawn.â€
For a peek inside more Southern California homes and gardens, check out our Homes of The Times gallery. For shopping scoops and sales alerts, check out The Scout. (Christina House / For The Times)
