When information emerged this week that late Love Story star Ryan O’Neal’s gorgeous Malibu seaside home – with its sweeping views over the Pacific – had been diminished to rubble it marked greater than the tip of a household residence.
‘The home is nothing however ruins now so you may’t even say “if partitions might speak,”’ a neighbor who grew up on the identical stretch of seaside instructed me. ‘The home did have unhealthy ju-ju… there’ll by no means be one other place like that in Hollywood, that’s for positive.’
The 2-story $3.5 million home overlooking La Costa Seashore was occasion central not simply to folks in Malibu however to everybody in Hollywood. It’s the place O’Neal wooed stars like Angelica Houston, Ursula Andress, Diana Ross, Joan Collins and the good love of his life, Charlie’s Angels actress Farrah Fawcett.
O’Neal’s son, actor and sportscaster Patrick O’Neal, 66, broke the information on Monday that the home – at 21368 Pacific Coast Freeway – had been misplaced within the Pacific Palisades wildfire, nonetheless burning uncontrolled. The blaze is only one of 5 in and round LA which have killed no less than two dozen folks, destroyed greater than 12,000 houses, colleges and companies, and compelled greater than 100,000 to evacuate.
Patrick posted movies and pictures of himself going by the rubble of his well-known father’s residence on Instagram. He included an uplifting {photograph} of a rainbow over the still-smoldering wreckage. Understandably upset, Patrick mentioned: ‘It’s really devastating to have grown up right here in Malibu and to simply now have seen that our household home is gone.’
Definitely, the destruction is unthinkable and wrenchingly tragic, however not everybody shares Patrick’s fond recollections of Ryan’s place.
Information emerged this week that late Love Story star Ryan O’Neal’s gorgeous Malibu seaside home, with its sweeping views over the Pacific, had been diminished to rubble.
The 2-story $3.5 million home overlooking La Costa Seashore was occasion central not simply to folks in Malibu however to everybody in Hollywood.
It’s the place O’Neal wooed stars like Angelica Houston, Ursula Andress, Diana Ross , Joan Collins and the good love of his life, Charlie’s Angels actress Farrah Fawcett (pictured with O’Neal in 1989).
The mid-century trendy construction cantilevered over the sand, shoulder-to-shoulder with its neighbors, will probably be without end remembered as one of the vital notorious occasion pads of all time.
‘The tales of debauchery popping out of there by no means stopped,’ the supply mentioned. ‘Ryan would have week-long drug events which might descend into mayhem with folks capturing weapons off the deck. It was the wildest home in LA.
‘Everybody who was anybody got here by there,’ I used to be instructed. ‘Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, all of the unhealthy boys. In fact, they attracted the attractive women. And the partying attracted all of the drug sellers. You could possibly get any drug you needed at Ryan’s. I actually don’t suppose there was a celebration home prefer it earlier than it or since.’
O’Neal, a ruggedly good-looking former semi-professional boxer, first made his identify as a D-list cleaning soap star on the 60s TV drama Peyton Place. Nevertheless it was the 1970 movie ‘Love Story’ – a tearjerker through which O’Neal performed an Ivy League grad who falls for the charms of a ‘common’ woman (performed by Ali McGraw) – that turned him right into a famous person.
The movie, which sees McGraw’s character die of most cancers, with its tagline ‘Love Means By no means Having To Say You Are Sorry’, cemented O’Neal as a $1 million-a-picture main man.
In 1973, ‘Paper Moon’ starring his daughter Tatum O’Neal – nonetheless the youngest particular person ever to win an Oscar, aged 10 – made him what he described as ‘catnip’ to girls and the partying started in earnest.
O’Neal purchased his 2,344 sq. ft. three-bedroom, three-bathroom home for $151,000 in 1976. In-built 1952, it sat on a 6,764 sq.ft. lot with steps main right down to pristine La Costa seaside, recognized to locals as ‘the Cove’ and had big glass home windows in the lounge and Ryan’s main bedroom which ‘have been at all times left open so you might hear the waves crashing.’
O’Neal lived there till his demise in December 2023, aged 82, however the tales of his harum-scarum days by no means light.
‘You’d go for a stroll within the morning and there could be all these our bodies of people that handed out from the night time earlier than splayed out on the seaside,’ the supply mentioned. ‘The cops have been at all times being referred to as however they didn’t do something. Again then half of them most likely joined in.’
Patrick posted movies and pictures of himself going by the rubble of his well-known father’s residence on Instagram. He included an uplifting {photograph} of a rainbow over the still-smoldering wreckage.
‘Ryan (pictured in 1975) would have week-long drug events which might descend into mayhem with folks capturing weapons off the deck. It was the wildest home in LA,’ a supply mentioned.
The mid-century trendy construction cantilevered over the sand, shoulder-to-shoulder with its neighbors, will probably be without end remembered as one of the vital notorious occasion pads of all time.
O’Neal hit his skilled peak throughout an period of free intercourse, cocaine, arduous ingesting and arduous dwelling in Hollywood. He checked all of the containers. However there was a darkish facet to the hedonism.
O’Neal, who brazenly admitted he was a ‘awful’ father, had three younger kids: Tatum and Griffin – from a failed first marriage to actress Joanna Moore, an alcoholic and Patrick – from a second failed marriage to actress Leigh Taylor-Younger.
Tatum, now 61 and sober, would later recount in her 2004 memoir A Paper Life (itals) that her mom, unable to manage, off-loaded her and her brother onto O’Neal who raised them in ‘feral’ situations within the Malibu residence.
Tatum had her personal battles with medicine and would find yourself dropping custody of the three kids she shared with ex-husband tennis ace John McEnroe. She mentioned the Malibu residence was a free-for-all.
The Malibu supply mentioned: ‘Tatum would stroll in on her father having intercourse within the kitchen with random girls. She noticed issues no little woman ought to need to see.’
She first took medicine at age eight. At 12 years previous, she was lured into an opium-fueled orgy with one in all her father’s drug sellers. ‘When your mother and father are off getting drunk or excessive they aren’t watching what occurs to their kids. I suffered years of abuse, each emotional and sexual,’ she mentioned.
Tatum got here residence sooner or later years later to search out her father in mattress together with her greatest buddy, actress Melanie Griffith, then 18.
For youthful son Griffin, 60, the Malibu home harbored equally painful recollections.
In an interview just a few years in the past, Griffin instructed me how his father as soon as punched his tooth out throughout a drunken row. On one other event, O’Neal pointed a loaded revolver at Griffin’s head and ‘threatened to blow my brains out.’
In 1973, ‘Paper Moon’ starring his daughter Tatum O’Neal (pictured together with her father in 1975) made him what he described as ‘catnip’ to girls and the partying started in earnest.
His personal drug habit started at age 9 when his father taught him to roll a marijuana joint and issues went downhill from there. ‘My father gave me cocaine once I was 11 and insisted I take it,’ Griffin as soon as revealed.
‘He was violent all over my upbringing. He was a really abusive, narcissistic psychopath.’
Griffin would later by accident kill his greatest buddy, Gian-Carlo Coppola (son of Godfather legend Francis Ford Coppola) in a boating accident in 1986.
The nice love of O’Neal’s life, actress Farrah Fawcett, moved into the Malibu residence in 1979 shortly after she left her husband, Six Million Greenback Man Lee Majors.
O’Neal would later joke that Majors, his greatest buddy, requested him to regulate Farrah whereas he went out of city. Inside 24 hours Farrah was in O’Neal’s mattress – and Majors was toast.
The supply mentioned: ‘Farrah introduced stability to the Malibu place. There have been fewer events. Ryan cherished her and he or she cherished taking part in home. She’d have dinner events each Friday night time and also you by no means knew who you’ll meet there. She was into artwork and books and you’ll stroll in to search out Andy Warhol sitting subsequent to Jack Nicholson.
‘There was a Warhol portray of Farrah on the wall in the lounge. There was speak the household offered it after Ryan’s demise. I can’t think about it could have been left in there to burn.’
In 1985, Fawcett turned pregnant together with her and O’Neal’s son, Redmond.
‘Ryan needed to return to partying however Farrah kicked into mother mode,’ Fawcett’s buddy instructed me. ‘She ended up taking her personal place in Westwood to get Redmond out of there.’
The breathtakingly lovely actress saved attempting to make the connection work till she got here residence sooner or later to search out Ryan in mattress with actress Leslie Stefanson, thirty years his junior and one in all her closest mates.
O’Neal later mentioned: ‘I didn’t count on to see her (Farrah) down there on the home. I attempted to place my pants on however put each legs in a single gap.’ Strive as she may to maintain Redmond remoted from his father’s recklessness, Fawcett couldn’t. Redmond ended up shifting in along with his father at 15 and quickly turned hooked on crystal meth, cocaine and heroin. There have been a number of stints in rehab.
‘Farrah introduced stability to the Malibu place. There have been fewer events. Ryan cherished her and he or she cherished taking part in home,’ a supply mentioned. (The couple are pictured right here in 1984).
O’Neal lived there till his demise in December 2023, aged 82, however the tales of his harum-scarum days by no means light. (He’s pictured right here in 2003).
Police busted each Redmond and O’Neal on the home in 2008 for possession of crystal meth. Redmond is now believed to dwell in a long-term psychiatric facility within the LA space. Fawcett died of most cancers in 2009 aged 62.
However, for all of the ache and drama, the lack of the Malibu home clearly resonated deeply with O’Neal’s household this week.
Tatum, who made amends together with her father earlier than his 2003 demise from most cancers, mentioned: ‘It’s the saddest ever. So unhappy I might cry. Gone gone gone gone. It’s so scary. I’m so freaking unhappy.’
Son Patrick, who mentioned he had at all times loved a superb relationship along with his father, was additionally devastated.
Whether or not the O’Neal household decides to rebuild stays to be seen. However one factor is for positive, the legend of Ryan O’Neal’s occasion home will dwell on in Hollywood infamy for years to return.
