It’s true, the house grew beyond the original scope, but we were in compliance with all of the city’s laws and building codes, so we didn’t give much thought to it. We had a wonderful architect and his design was proportional, and even at 56,000 square feet, the house didn’t occupy more than 50 percent of the property. Our perspective was pretty simple. Aaron’s hard work and perseverance had finally paid off. His career had spiraled upward. The poor Jewish kid from Texas who came to Los Angeles with borrowed money could afford to build his dream house complete with a bowling alley and a barbershop. The man who refused to ever get on a plane was creating his version of his West Texas ranch where he could bowl with his family and friends (Aaron’s version of horseback riding), sit on the front porch, and host his traditional Sunday night barbecues.
I won’t lie. Working on the interior design of the house was every woman’s dream. I took two different ten-day trips to France and England to choose fabrics and furniture, and I also bought my fireplaces there. I remember sometimes going into Aaron’s office, and he was on the phone with someone at the network. I would try to get his attention to show him swatches of fabric or pieces of tile and stone, but he wasn’t even remotely interested. While he was dialing his next phone call, he would take a minute with me.
“I need to pay for this house. It’s up to you to build it. Whatever you want is always perfect.” So while Aaron continued creating television shows, I built the house.
It took a crew of one hundred and fifty men, five hundred tons of steel, one hundred seventy thousand glass tiles for the swimming pool, and two hundred thousand hand-laid granite pavers. Our foyer was made complete with the Gone with the Wind–inspired double-sided spiral staircase. And yes, it was imported from none other than Texas and brought in and installed in one continuous piece. It was Tori who christened the house “The Manor.” We did other fun things like have a small kitchenette installed in the master bedroom where we could microwave popcorn for watching movies in bed or prepare snacks.I also hand-drew a floral pattern that we had reproduced and used as a motif throughout the master bedroom.
One of my favorite rooms in the house (besides my fantasy bathroom, which is really my sanctuary) was Aaron’s study. This was a room that I put extra care into. I really wanted it to reflect his talent and his accomplishments. It had majestic wood paneling, a magnificent oversized desk, and enough shelf space to hold his bound leather scripts with gilded font on the spine, until he was one hundred and eight years old. Aaron didn’t write in this room, but it was where he held all of his important meetings.
In the end The Manor was 56,500 square feet, which did not include our 17,000-square-foot attic. The attic was like our own personal warehouse. It’s where we stored our luggage for all of our old-fashioned train trips across the country. It housed all of our decorations for every holiday. I still can’t believe this nice Jewish girl decorated her house for Christmas, but I really did love all of the lights and the ornaments. I still get wistful thinking about it. The attic also had space for my collectibles, which are numerous.
We moved in on Valentine’s Day 1991. Even on this day that is supposed to be about friendship and love, our next-door neighbor was still at it and would be for quite some time. I’m not sure how many months or years later, but I was out walking our property one day and something got into me. I picked up some rotten fruit that had fallen off of our trees and threw it over the fence into her yard. I know it was naughty, but sometimes a girl’s got to do what a girl’s got to do.
The Los Angeles Times was also not done with us. In a review of The Manor, contributor Sam Hall Kaplan called it one of the worst architectural projects of the ’80s:
“Aaron Spelling residence, which at 56,500 square feet, should be considered a congregate living facility and not a single-family home, and therefore in violation of Holmby Hills zoning. What Spelling’s folly is, of course, is a sad commentary on the distorted values that have taken the architectural form of monster mansions at a time when tens of thousands of persons are homeless.”
And even when Aaron passed away, The New York Times printed this as part of his obituary, “Mr. Spelling himself, though a self-effacing and extremely shy man in private, put his own vast wealth on display in the late 1980s when he and his wife, Candy, supervised the construction of their home in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles. The structure, which like his shows drew mostly scathing reviews, eventually contained 123 rooms over about 56,000 square feet. It was said to include a bowling alley, an ice rink and an entire wing devoted to his wife’s wardrobe.”
If any, I think I my only regret is that we were somewhat apologetic all these years for having built The Manor. Especially now in light of the Bernie Madoff scandal, I feel that I should have stood up and reminded people that Aaron earned every last cent. He didn’t embezzle it from anyone and then abscond with it. He was the most prolific television writer-producer in the world. He still holds the Guinness World Record as the most prolific producer. Even though he’s been gone for seven years, he is still ranked in the top twelve posthumously earning celebrities. He was also incredibly generous, whether it was with the writers he hired on his shows or with charities he supported financially.
I feel like I also should have spoken up on behalf of my gift-wrapping room. For years now it has been fodder for every media outlet and comedy sketch show. Practically speaking, we sent out literally thousands of gifts to network executives, agents, talent managers, writers, producers, celebrities, stylists, heads of state—this list goes on. It doesn’t even include friends and family. It wasn’t as if I was buying gifts for myself all day and then wrapping them for myself.
What most people don’t know about me is that I’m actually very creative. After my divorce from Howard, I enrolled at the Chouinard design school. So for me, designing, packaging, and wrapping the gifts is an art. I notice nobody gives Martha Stewart or Rosie O’Donnell any grief for their much-publicized crafting rooms, but somehow I get it all.
Despite all this negativity, we’ve also had fun with some of the attention. John Perry, a singer I’d never heard of, composed the Calypso song “The Ballad of Aaron and Candy (An Ode to Spelling’s Dwelling)” which I have yet to hear. I was able to find the lyrics online:
“See Candy’s jewels, see Aaron’s money,
Aaron doesn’t think being picked on is funny.
See Candy’s clothes, see Aaron’s pad
See Aaron and Candy’s castle make the neighbors mad.
But they’re livin’ in splendor high above the crowds
60,000 square feet of heaven.
That’s Spelling’s dwelling, I said
Spelling’s Dwelling….”
In the movie Legally Blonde, Elle Woods played by Reese Witherspoon described her social standing to Warner Huntington III by saying “I grew up in Bel Air, Warner. Across the street from Aaron Spelling.” It was an unexpected homage, and both Aaron and I got a kick out of it. I can only imagine what our neighbors must have thought.
17
The Entertainers
They came every three minutes starting in the early morning until the wee hours of the night. Some were topless. Some looked like they were going on safari. There was one in particular that was very somber and sent shivers up our spines. We could never understand what they were saying, but the cadence of their respective voices was always the same. One night, Aaron hopped onto a big red double-decker that looked as if it had come straight from London. It was stopped right in front of our gates just as we were returning from an evening out. It really threw me for a loop to see Aaron on board the Hollywood tour bus. The passengers were literally gasping. For that matter, so was I.
I couldn’t help smiling as my husband made his way down the aisle. He was smiling, shaking everybody’s hands, and of course, talking. When he got back in the car, I asked him what he had said. He told me that he had thanked everyone for watching his shows over the years and for helping us build our dream
home. The fans on that bus represented almost every one of his shows: Fantasy Island, Dynasty, Beverly Hills 90210, Starsky and Hutch, and Melrose Place.
That was Aaron. He had his very humble beginnings but never forgot them and never took anything for granted. I loved the quality of his character from the very first time I met him. And that generous and open spirit really was what our home was about.
There is no doubt The Manor became a stage for legendary parties where we hosted movie stars, television stars, royalty, heads of state, and the biggest players in finance. My mother would have been pleased that everything she had worked so hard to instill in me had turned out to be of great value.
It sounds funny to say, but we really were just a regular family living at The Manor, and our days in that respect were quite ordinary. Aaron was always up early and went downstairs to have his breakfast and tea in the Breakfast Room. Then he’d come back upstairs to dress and was off to work either on set or at his office. He worked very long days. Our children went to school, and afterward they usually did their homework in my office, where I worked on projects for my charities and our foundations. When Aaron came home at night, he usually had the phone glued to his ear until we sat down to dinner.
I always stayed up later than Aaron did. Sometimes I would bake and other times I would do things like work on my scrapbooks. Another thing I absolutely loved to do was just relax in my bathroom. I would take baths or give myself an in-home minifacial. This was truly the only room where I had any privacy, so when we built the house, I had a chaise put in there so I could really relax.
When the kids were teenagers, they had all their friends over to the house. I preferred our house being the “hang out.” This way I always knew what was going on. My kids were typical teenagers. I liked their friends but knew I had to keep an eye on them. One time I caught one of them drinking a screwdriver. It looked like just an ordinary glass of orange juice, but I had a feeling it wasn’t, and I was right.
On the weekends Aaron and Randy played tennis. We also had friends over to bowl. One of my favorite things to do was have movie night at our house with a small group of good friends. I’d set out desserts in our screening room, and we’d watch the latest attraction.
For more formal occasions, our dining room table seated thirty people. I always had French service with a butler at either end of the table. This allowed everyone to be served at the same time. I had every accessory imaginable. My sterling silver was kept in a humidity-controlled room, and our collection of wines was stored in a temperature-controlled cellar.
To this day, people e-mail me or stop me on the street to ask for tips about hosting everything from bridal showers to holiday dinners. I have to say, I have acquired quite a bit of wisdom over the years, starting with the first barbecue I hosted at Aaron’s house the weekend that I met him. The first thing I always tell anyone who asks is that the most important element to a successful party is creating a welcoming atmosphere where everyone feels comfortable.
When I think of all the celebrations we hosted at The Manor, one of the best ones was the Easter party we organized for Centro de Niños, a nonprofit bilingual and bicultural day-care center. Centro de Niños serves the working poor in East Los Angeles. For years, we hosted an Easter celebration just for them on Good Friday. Our guest list included somewhere between one hundred and fifty to two hundred children.
The looks on their faces when they arrived and saw the decorations, the moon bounces, and the stage for the puppet show were just amazing. It was sort of heartbreaking and heartwarming all at once. I’ll never forget seeing all those pairs of shoes lined up in front of the moon bounces. I thought, how are these kids going to remember where they left their shoes? Somehow they always did.
We put a lot of effort into creating handmade Easter baskets, complete with an Easter bunny, for every one of the children. This was back before the candy companies manufactured the plastic eggs with the candy already inside of them, so we were usually up until three or four in the morning assembling the plastic eggs and wrapping the baskets in my gift-wrapping room.
The Easter baskets were always a big hit, and they really made staying up all night worth it. We also made a tradition of bringing the kids up to the doll room so they could see my collection of Madame Alexander dolls. It was like a trip to a toy museum for them, and they really enjoyed it.
I became involved with the Centro de Niños at the suggestion of Richard Alatorre, who was a city councilman in Los Angeles. Richard was one of the most influential Latinos in the state of California and among other things, he was an important advocate for children in the community of East Los Angeles.
After moving into The Manor, we had many requests to hold fund-raisers there, but we were always very selective. I really wanted to support a children’s charity. We had a short list and met with three of four different charities before meeting with Sandra Serrano-Sewell, the executive director of Centro de Niños. After just five minutes with her, I knew I wanted to be involved with them.
One of my biggest fund-raisers for Centro de Niños was from my QVC Madame Alexander doll collection. In 1994, my longtime friend Nolan Miller was at QVC selling them some jewelry he had designed. He happened to see some dolls from a doll collection they were considering, and he told them very unapologetically, “The dolls are ugly.” He suggested they speak with me about creating a doll collection for them. By then I had been a collector of Madame Alexander dolls for about fifteen years. Not long after, the president of QVC, Doug Briggs, asked me to do a collection for them.
It goes without saying that the idea of introducing a whole line of my own beautiful fantasy dolls was thrilling, but I also knew how much work and time would be involved. Aaron and the kids were always my number-one priority. Even though Tori and Randy were teenagers by then, I knew my husband needed to be part of the decision. It was going to be a tough sell because taking this on would require at least two trips to New York City and at least a year, if not more, of preparation.
My proposal to embark on this project went over with Aaron like a lead balloon. We had a very traditional marriage, and Aaron never liked it when I wasn’t available to him or to make decisions for the kids. I still hadn’t traveled anywhere without him in all the time that we had been married. It took me about a week, but I was finally able to convince my husband that this was a huge opportunity for me. I argued that the president of QVC had asked me himself, and Madame Alexander wanted to produce my designs.
Once Aaron got on board, he was very supportive. I flew to New York City to the Madame Alexander factory in Harlem, which had once been the original factory for Dodge. After meeting with executives at Madame Alexander, we flew to Westchester, Pennsylvania, to meet with Doug Briggs and the business affairs attorney for QVC. I told them both that one of my requirements was that my profits and proceeds would be donated to Centro de Niños.
Once I had the green light from my husband and QVC, I set up a workshop in the attic of The Manor. I was literally up there with the dustpans, cleaning supplies, and all of our vacuums. That was where I put together my ideas and sketched out each doll. I tacked up my swatches and also had photographic references. It was such an exciting time. I was so inspired while I was working on the collection. I knew the back story of each doll and exactly what every one should look like down to the smallest detail.
It took a year and a half to complete the collection of twenty-four dolls. There were two sizes: twelve-inch and seventeen-inch. All the dolls had different hairdos and fabulous underpinnings. The time just flew, and before I knew it, it was time to fly back to New York City for the big day. Like any designer, I was so proud of my work, especially in light of how much sacrifice had gone into it. On Sunday, September 18, 1994, we went on the air during prime time for three hours. It was a win-win situation for me, QVC, and of course all the children at the Centro de Niños.
The other fund-raiser that is most memorable in my mind happens to have followed on the heels o
f my QVC venture. It seems funny to call it a fund-raiser since it was a dinner with Prince Charles, but the evening was in fact an event to raise funds for his charitable foundation, The Prince’s Charities. Lew and Edie Wasserman asked Aaron and me to host the dinner for the Prince of Wales, who was on a goodwill tour following his divorce from Diana, Princess of Wales.
We agreed to it without having any idea of what was involved. The guest list was a real “Who’s Who” of Hollywood with plates going for $10,000 each. After all the RSVPs were accounted for, the list was about three hundred people long. About a week before Prince Charles was scheduled to arrive, an advance team came out to meet with us.
The advance party included a press secretary, logistics manager, senior personnel in charge of security, and a researcher. They briefed us on royal etiquette, outlined the proper table setting, and helped us create a menu that would be to the Prince’s liking. We learned quickly that royal appearances are tightly scripted and that there is not much room for improvisation.
First and most important was the “no-touch” rule. Even if Prince Charles were to show us or any of our guests attention, we were not to make the mistake of reaching out and touching him. If the Prince happened to extend his hand, we were supposed to deviate from our American custom of shaking his hand. Instead, we were instructed to touch it very lightly and very briefly.
The second rule was that nobody could be seated at dinner until Prince Charles was seated. Then everyone else could take their places at their respective tables. Part and parcel of this rule was the protocol that we were to stop eating if the Prince stopped eating. I didn’t see how this could work unless everybody stared at the Prince all through dinner. Finally, and this was the hardest one for Aaron, nobody was allowed to get up from the dinner table until the Prince did.
I honestly thought finding a caterer to prepare game bird for three hundred people was going to be the biggest challenge. The evening was going to be very complex, and because I am such a perfectionist, it was absolutely nerve-wracking. The logistics manager did a walk-through of the house with me, and we worked out where the dinner would be held. There would be tents outside and guests would walk through the house.
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