Beachwood Canyon home

**Honey** · September 5th, 2009, 07:51 PM

Mae Brunken's Beachwood Canyon home

( Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times ) By Debra Prinzing

Mae Brunken wanted a home with a past. The interior designer and set decorator ultimately found her period piece high in the hills of Hollywood: a 1927 Spanish Colonial Revival that starred as the home of Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) in Billy Wilder's "Double Indemnity."

As principal of Mae Brunken Design, Brunken likes to create spaces "around a character and what that character would love." In renovating the white stucco-and-red-tile-roofed "Double Indemnity" house, she channeled the character of a glamorous movie star of the 1930s and '40s.

"I wanted to restore the house and have fun furnishing it as a part of the Hollywood era," she says. To blend two styles -- Deco interiors and Spanish architecture -- Brunken couldn't interpret either too purely. Instead, she used vivid Deco colors and glossy finishes to brighten the home's traditional terra cotta floors, stark white stucco walls and exposed beams. "I like my environments to be modern-day and a little playful," she says. "I love fresh and happy color. I want to mix different periods and allow the pieces to play together."

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(Paramount Pictures) In the film, the romantically linked Phyllis Dietrichson (Stanwyck) and Walter Neff (MacMurray), left, plot to kill Dietrichson’s husband (Tom Powers), right. Photographed 55 years ago, the foyer looks much the same then …

Mae Brunken's Beachwood Canyon home in the Hollywood Hills - latimes.com

**cupcake** · September 5th, 2009, 07:56 PM

Gawdy!!!

**A*O** · September 5th, 2009, 07:58 PM

Apart from the terrible rugs I like it.

**Brookie** · September 5th, 2009, 08:05 PM

The bathroom and the red bedroom are making my eyes cross, but I like it overall. Love the movie poster theme.

**Mercer** · September 5th, 2009, 08:07 PM

I hate all of it with a passion.
Except the bathroom and the entrance way on the last pic.

**calcifer** · September 5th, 2009, 08:32 PM

i love the house itself. but i think she probably has the ugliest collection of carpets i've ever seen in my life. another thing that bothers me here are the ceilings. that brownish/yellowish shade doesn't make them very attractive to look at. (pic 11&12)

**bomulll** · September 5th, 2009, 08:58 PM

i hate all of the posters and some of the paintings and the rugs ,apart from that it's ok

**atrayubrandy** · September 5th, 2009, 09:55 PM

I actually love it. It isn't my usual style but I think it's fun.

**mizglam** · September 5th, 2009, 10:22 PM

Looking at the bathroom makes me dizzy.

**msdeb** · September 5th, 2009, 10:51 PM

i love it all..... especially the stove.

**Shinola** · September 6th, 2009, 01:47 AM

Love the house, hate the decor. The posters remind me of a friend's college dorm room. The foyer rug looks like a bull's-eye you're supposed to hurl toward from the top of the staircase.

The ceramic pieces on the piano turn it into a piece of furniture rather than an instrument, a pet peeve of mine.

Anyway ... hate the colors, and the clumpiness of the furniture arrangments, and the weird little 1980s-ish displays of knick-knacks. There's a fussy little touch of my grandma about it.

I just don't really get it.