Queer Places:
10100 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90077
Glen Holse (July 3, 1930 - February 14, 1983) was an art director and set
decorator. He had a small studio in Hollywood that made scenery for various
movie companies, legitimate theaters, and for some of the musical extravaganza
casinos in Las Vegas.
Glen Holse was born on July 3, 1930 in Beresford, South Dakota, and graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. During his 19 months service, he redecorated the Armored Combat Training Center at Camp Irving.
His early designs were for a wallpaper firm. Glen Holse was Steve Allen's art director before moving on to design Liberace's Las Vegas act.
Located at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Carolwood Drive, the sprawling Mediterranean of Jayne Mansfield was built in 1929 for megaphone-crooner Rudy Vallee. In 1957, a year after the release of her breakout film, The Girl Can’t Help It, Mansfield forked out $76,000 for the 40-room mansion. With the help of her new husband, body builder Mickey Hargitay, and theatrical set designer Glen Holse, the star got busy remaking it into her signature “Pink Palace.” Along with a pink exterior, the house was endowed with wall-to-wall pink shag carpet, a pink-marble bathtub, and a fountain spurting pink champagne. Heart-shapes abounded—in tubs, fireplaces, the driveway, and, of course, the swimming pool. Offering the occasional hard-edged counterpoint to the home’s dominant fuzzy-pink theme were mirrored walls, rock walls, even tufted-red-leather walls. The Pink Palace would serve as Mansfield’s family residence-slash-branding tool for a decade, until her death in 1967. Subsequent owners included Ringo Starr, Mama Cass Elliot, and Engelbert Humperdinck. In 2002, Humperdinck sold the property to his neighbor Roland Arnall for $30 million. The founder of subprime mortgage lender Ameriquest and then-owner of the storied Owlwood estate, Arnall purchased Mansfield’s beloved palace solely to raze it and enlarge Owlwood’s already-quite-substantial lot.
Glen Holse died on February 14, 1983 in Bakersfield, California, USA.
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