Our old home remains today on the Los Angeles historic registrar, as one of Hollywood's most unusual architectural landmarks. We simply called it "the Franklin House" because of its Franklin Avenue address, but it is officially known as "the Sowden House."
Named for the man who commissioned it, the Sowden House is an architectural wonder designed and built by Lloyd Wright,* who was living in the shadow of his famous father, Frank Lloyd Wright. With its brooding stone archways, long corridors, wide central courtyard and pool, and hidden rooms, it is like a Hollywood set out of a 1930s five-reeler: foreign and exotic. Cars driving by would stop and stare at it in astonishment. Passersby could not believe they were looking at what was a recreation of a 3,000-year-old Mayan temple built of giant concrete blocks. It had no visible windows. It was a high-walled fortress, private and impenetrable, right in the center of Hollywood's residential district, only fifteen minutes from Father's downtown medical clinic.
From the busy Franklin Avenue street frontage, heavy stone steps led steeply up to our house's entrance, which was guarded by an imposing iron gate decorated with iron flowers. Once through the gate you turned immediately to your right and continued up a dark passageway, then made another right turn to the front door. It was like entering a cave with secret stone tunnels, within which only the initiated could feel comfortable. All others proceeded with great caution, not knowing which way to turn. Growing up in that house, my brothers and I saw it as a place of magic that we were convinced could easily have greeted the uninvited with pits of fire, poison darts, deadly snakes, or even a giant sword-bearing turbaned bodyguard at the door. Right out of The Arabian Nights.
Exhibit 12
The Franklin Home, Hollywood, California
Once inside the temple, there was a blaze of light that came at you from all directions, because all the rooms opened onto a central open-air courtyard. The massive stone blocks were laid out in a giant rectangular shape from the front of the street to the alley at the back. There existed no yard exterior to the home, only the open interior atrium surrounded by the four corridors of the house. The highceilinged foyer greeted you at first entrance. Beyond and to the west was the living room, with its ornate fireplace and floor-to-ceiling bookcases that concealed a secret room, accessible only to those who knew how to open the hidden door. The west wing contained the dining room, kitchen, maid's quarters, and guest rooms.
The east wing held the master bedroom and master bath, along with four more bedrooms laid out one after the other, until finally at the north wing there was a huge room, which Sowden had constructed as an entertainment hall or large stage for performances. From any room one could step into a central courtyard full of exotic foliage and beautiful giant cactus plants reaching straight into the sky. Once inside this remarkable house one found oneself in absolute privacy, invisible to the outside world.
This was a storybook time for me and my brothers, who played the Three Musketeers in service to our father, who played the king. Our father was dashing and confident. At six foot one, with his dark hair, trim mustache, immaculate dress, and the formal bearing befitting a highly respected physician, he cut an exceptionally handsome figure. It seemed as if he walked with the imperial air of an aristocrat, the type of man one might meet only once but would never forget. There was a charisma and a power to his presence that commanded attention. When he spoke, his voice had a resonance and power of authority that confirmed that one was in the presence of a man of destiny. His bearing and demeanor conveyed his ability and confidence to accomplish anything. If he was the king, we, his children, were the court.
I was four when we moved into the Franklin House, and we lived there until I was nine. My memories of that time are only fragmentary, and it was only through my rediscovery of my father later on that I was able to verily some of the truths behind those memories. But, like shadows, these shards of memory have followed me through life, and only now am I beginning to understand their import.
I remember how much I loved Father's Army jeep, a real World War II surplus model with an engine that growled and gears that clashed. I loved sitting in the front seat when he drove it out from the rear alleyway, across the vacant dirt lot that abutted our property, then over the curb into the busy intersection of Normandie and Franklin. Kelvin and I would take turns riding with Father in the jeep as he made his house calls. Sitting in the front of the open vehicle, I would look over as Dad navigated through the Hollywood traffic, his wondrous big black medical bag on the seat between us. On several occasions when the opportunity permitted, I looked inside this bag without Dad's knowledge. At that young age, I didn't recognize the objects, nor could I pronounce the names of the things there, and only later, as a Navy corpsman, would I learn what they were, but my child's mind knew they were Father's tools and were important. Cold to the touch and mysterious to the eye, his instruments fascinated me. There were his stethoscope, a tightly wound roll of ace bandage, a hemostat, the strange-looking sphygmomanometer, and a tourniquet. There were also labeled vials with names I couldn't understand, such as penicillin, Benadryl, and morphine. But mostly, I recall how I loved the smells that came from inside that bag, the smells of all things medicinaclass="underline" clean, sharp, antiseptic.
I remember sitting in the jeep outside private homes while Father attended to his patients. After an hour, or maybe two, he would walk outside with a woman, whom I guessed had been his patient, seeing him off. It seemed as if all his patients said the same words, and those words always made me afraid. "Oh, so this is your son. He's darling. Can I keep him here with me?" I would look up as Father stood by the side of the jeep, holding my breath, not knowing what his answer would be until his slow, hesitant response would finally come: "Not this time, perhaps another, we shall see." The woman would touch his arm — they always touched his arm — and would smile at us and say, as he climbed into the jeep, "Thank you, Doctor. I feel so much better after your visit." He would smile, start the engine, and off we would go. Michael was nine, and he never went on these house calls with Dad, nor did Dad ever offer to take him. I never understood why.
Another warm memory from the Franklin years is of Fern Dell Park. My brothers and I spent whole summers there, all day every day. Father would drive us the short distance from the Franklin House to the entrance of the park, just a half-mile from our front door. He would drop us in the mornings with a stern, "Boys, I will pick you up here at 4:00 p.m. Do not make me wait." We hiked and played and scoured the park. We knew every turn, every tree, every hidden cave. Fern Dell had a creek that ran for miles north to south, and we would search for crayfish and bullfrogs, pretend we were explorers, finding and claiming new lands.
Michael, never without his beloved books, would read to us under the shade of a tall oak at the creek's edge. In the summer of '49, he was Robin Hood, Kelvin was Friar Tuck, and I, being larger and taller than either of my brothers, was Little John. Fern Dell became our Sherwood Forest. We laughed at the ferocity of Father's stern commands and rigid dictates: "Be at the entrance at four and do not make me wait." And in our make-believe we transformed our father into the evil Sheriff of Nottingham.
I also remember lots of people — grown-ups, men, and women — laughing late into the night at the Franklin House. Some of the faces and people I remember, most I have forgotten. Sometimes there were angry words with Father yelling, Mother yelling, then Mother crying. But mostly I remember the laughing. I remember Duncan, tall and twenty then, in his sailor's uniform, having come down from San Francisco with his friends to see his father and his three younger half-brothers. Even now I can see him standing in the courtyard, laughing and playing with the grown-ups, having fun with Father and his friends. Duncan would stay only a day or two, then back he would go to San Francisco.