The Elrod House, an over-the-top Palm Springs home featured in a famous fight scene in a 1971 James Bond movie, has closed sale for $7.7 million.
The buyer is Los Angeles-based fashion designer Jeremy Scott, creative director of the Moschino line.
The house was listed at $8 million, down from its $10.5 million pricetag earlier this year. That asking price was chopped from $13.89 million in 2009, according to Realtor.com.
Designed by legendary modern architect John Lautner, a protégé of Frank Lloyd Wright, and built in 1969, the residence appeared in the Bond film, “Diamonds are Forever.” The house was where actor Sean Connery’s agent 007 got badly kicked around by a bikini-clad bodyguard.
Architectural Digest in April described the home this way:
“The single-story structure is defined by its circular living room with rosewood walls and black slate herringbone flooring. A concrete dome overhead with clerestories (windows) radiating from the center floods the room with light, and a massive curved curtain wall retracts to reveal panoramic vistas of the Coachella Valley.”
Some of the natural rock is part of the home’s interior, and the glass walls open to a swimming pool and terrace that appear to float above the scenery.
The property, at 8,901 square feet on 1.22 acres about a mile from downtown Palm Springs, includes a 2-bedroom guesthouse with a gym.
Scott has designed for Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry and other celebrities. When he entered escrow in June, Variety wrote: “It is perhaps not so strange that Mister Scott, well-known for his celeb-studded bashes during the annual Coachella Music Festival, would be interested in the iconic Elrod House since he already owns the Lautner-designed Foster-Carling House in L.A.’s Hollywood Hills that he scooped up in July 2014 for $3.25 million.”
In the L.A. house, Vogue magazine notes, Lautner conceived an “apostrophe-shaped pool to curl into the living room.”
The fashion designer plans to use the iconic Palm Springs residence as a second home, said John Nelson of Coldwell Banker Previews International, one of the listing agents. “He’s going to restore it to exactly the way it was,” he said. “But I’m sure the furnishings will be over the top.”
Michael J. Kilroy, a real estate investor from Palos Verdes Estates, bought the Elrod House for $5.5 million in 2003, according to a story in The Desert Sun in 2014. Property Radar shows the deed to the residence was conveyed to mortgage holder Lloyds Bank on May 17 after Kilroy was unable to sell the home.
Lautner had designed the house for Arthur Elrod, an interior designer. Some of Lautner’s other homes also have appeared in movies, including Pulp Fiction, The Big Lebowski, Lethal Weapon 2 and Charlie’s Angels.
In Orange County, a landmark, dome-shaped Balboa Island home designed by Lautner sold for more than $3.77 million in March.
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/house-727791-million-home.html
one of the listing agents. “He’s going to restore it to exactly the way it was,” he said. “But I’m sure the furnishings will be over the top.”
Exactly what I’d do if I had the $$$. Living real life in an actual Bond house is beyond amazing.
Clothing designer, knows all the alisters, has money, etc. The parties at that house would be amazing.
If walls could talk.
Awesome house, but Palm Springs is harsh. I’m not a fan of living where the environment is actively trying to kill me.