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http://www.omniture.com --> Sections Home Page Local News AP News AP Entertainment Archives Business Classifieds Event Calendar Forums Life Opinion Obituaries Photo Gallery Readers Photo Gallery Sports Tempo Weather Special Coverage 2006 Britt Festivals --> Shop Our Valley AutoFinder HomeFinder JobFinder Search Our Valley Special Sections Distinctly Northwest Readers' Choice Homelife Magazine Joy Magazine Holiday Guide Oregon Golf Info Oregon Wine Info Other Publications Local Links Ashland News eSouthernOregon Newspapers In Education Personals Moving Here Movie Listings TV Listings Volunteer Customer Service Advertise With Us Media Kit Place Classified Ad Contact Us FAQ's Home Delivery Site Map --> Email Story to a Friend October 19, 2006 Darryl Wilson relaxes in the living room of his Beverly Hills house. He designed the rug, chairs and sofa in the room. The home was once owned by Eddie and Toni Mannix, the powerful MGM vice president and his wife depicted in the film �Hollywoodland.� (Los Angeles Times) Tradition redefined A designer who draws inspiration from sources as wide-ranging as native cultures and modern minimalism finds his balance in a Beverly Hills home combining his past and dreams for the future By David A. Keeps LOS ANGELES — When Darryl Wilson says he knows "what makes a house work," he isn't just talking about floor plans and furniture placement. For years the 49-year-old designer has defrayed the cost of renovating his residences by getting them paying gigs as locations for magazine fashion spreads and print ads. "The houses that work are the ones with tons of glass and natural light, a simple white box with midcentury furniture," he says. "Photographers and their clients also love the sexy backdrop of a city view." Three years ago, Wilson found a Beverly Hills makeover project that was all that — with a fish-shaped swimming pool and a side of Hollywood history. The 6,000-square-foot ranch home was built in 1958 by Eddie and Toni Mannix, a powerful MGM vice president and his wife, the adulterous duo portrayed by Bob Hoskins and Diane Lane in the current release "Hollywoodland." The property included an Asian-style cabana inspired by the film "The Teahouse of the August Moon." Any vestiges of a movie colony mansion, however, had been "bastardized" with bad 1970s fixtures, ceramic tile floors, wood ceilings and rock fireplaces, Wilson says. After renting the house once — to a photographer for FHM men's magazine, which shot actress Teri Hatcher straddling Wilson's washing machine — Wilson reimagined it as "the type of house stars would've lived in during the glamorous and groovy era when the Polo Lounge and Perino's were swinging." Advertisement Deco-inspired doors with $500 Lucite knobs, triple-bevel-edged marble countertops and other custom elements add up to Wilson's design vision: Rat Pack modern with a Parisian accent. It is, he says, a home that reflects the elegance of European hotels and the ease of Southern California living. "Darryl has taken one of the predominant decorating trends of the moment, Hollywood glamour, and given it his own flair for luxury," says Stefan Lawrence, owner of the Los Angeles gallery Twentieth, where Wilson frequently shops. "What makes him distinctive as a designer is his ability to recognize the potential of the architecture as it exists and then execute perfectly correct interiors from start to finish." After his undergraduate years at the University of Southern California, Wilson went to law school, figuring he would become an entertainment attorney. He worked for record labels in London and managed Los Angeles-based musicians, restoring houses for himself and his clients on the side. In 1991, he gave up the dream of a career in the entertainment world. "You can't hide what's inside of you," Wilson says. "I realized just how much I loved design. I was trying to manage artists when I wanted to be one myself." He found his medium in real estate. He had an ability to look through sloppy remodeling and outdated decor and see the bones of a house. He designed Kelsey Grammer's Malibu compound and the New York offices of Interscope Records. His last house in the Hollywood Hills earned a minimum of $2,000 a day as a photo location. "It was ideal for anyone who wanted to tap into that retro, pop-hipster look," says Toni Maier, president of On Location, one of the companies that has represented Wilson's homes. The Beverly Hills house, Wilson says, has a different feel. "I feel grounded, not floating in space somewhere," he says. "I like the sense of connectedness I get from being in a one-story ranch house where my dogs can be on the outside of the house and literally follow me from room to room by watching me through the windows." Having spent much of his career as a designer living in low-slung, flat-topped midcentury homes, Wilson struggled with the prominently pitched roof and considered tearing down the house. He found a solution in shingled slate, a look that recalled French chateaux and postwar Hollywood mansions. "I knew what I had was a traditional house, and I'd always thought that traditional was boring," Wilson says, "but I was also burned out on doing post-and-beam Modern." The new slate roof complemented the few original details that made the ranch house look more stately than suburban. Wilson kept the existing copper oven hood in the kitchen, which he transformed into a clean white space with stainless steel appliances that sport copper-trimmed handles. Wilson furnished his pool deck with licorice-colored, all-weather wicker chairs and metal chaises from Crate and Barrel, topped with skirted black- and white-striped custom cushions. He brought the same palette indoors with a terrazzo floor in the entry and dining room that is white, trimmed with a Chanel-esque 61„2-inch-wide black border. "I liked the graphic, tuxedo-ish nature of it," says Wilson, who repeated the effect with black baseboards and moldings on walls and ceilings. "It hides a lot of sins where the moldings join." In the living room, he tamed a wild Western rock fireplace with a wide, ebonized mahogany mantel and gray marble hearth, crowned by eight black-and-white photos by the Hungarian modernist Gyorgy Kepes. On the nearly black herringbone parquet floor, Wilson placed a black-and-white custom rug that he had made through Designer Floor Coverings in West Hollywood. The rug's elaborate swirls, which look like pumped-up iron scrollwork or tribal tattoos, find a counterpart in Wilson's curvaceous design for a blue velvet couch. It's flanked by silk lanterns on carved wooden stands that he purchased in Hong Kong. "The house had enough right angles," Wilson says. "What it needed was softening curves, silhouettes that are as beautiful as the form of a woman in a flowing gown and the shape of an old Ferrari." Unable to find the right guest seating to complete the living room, Wilson had his upholstery shop construct two oversize chairs based on the sofa. "The lines of these pieces are incredibly elegant and hearken back to the great French designers of the 1930s, and that rug is insane," says Lawrence, who has offered to show them at Twentieth, citing the "attention to proportion, detail and superb craftsmanship." Wilson had his carpenter set up on site to cut the custom trim pieces and build cabinetry, including kitchen cupboards with silver-plated knobs that "look like cufflinks." In the two cavernous bathrooms of the Mannixes' his-and-hers master suites, he resurfaced everything in three types of marble. Not everything was custom or astronomically costly. Wilson found vintage dressers by decorator Dorothy Draper and lamps by Pierre Cardin at auctions and the spring Modernism show in Santa Monica. He purchased samples of new designs, including an ornate white-lacquered, button-tufted leather bergere chair at furniture exhibitions. For the guest powder room, he bought Bridgeport sconces from Williams-Sonoma Home for $195 and used the company's block crystal lamps in a basement billiards and media room, which has a projection-TV screen economically framed in black velvet ribbon. "I'm not this purist about periods or prices," Wilson says. "To me, a 1930s-style sofa and a '70s Lucite-and-chrome coffee table look completely contemporary together." (Begin optional trim) He also freely mixes abstract art, 20th century portrait photography, geological specimens, glow-in-the-dark acrylic sculptures and native artifacts. In the breakfast room, one battleship gray wall is hung with a new rug made from black rubber loops, and the opposite wall sports feathered headdresses from Cameroon. On a nearby fireplace ledge, a gilded and mirrored fan from Thailand sits on a museum mount. "I hate the word eclectic," Wilson says. "It strikes me as a term for lazy design or for homeowners who read too many magazines and can't decide what they want." (End optional trim) Wilson proves that even the most ornate furniture can be integrated into a minimalist interior. In one of the beige carpeted bedrooms, he created a camelback headboard upholstered in cut velvet that matches the Italian Baroque curves of two nightstands given to him by his parents. "As I've gotten older," he says, "I found that living in a semitraditional home, which is reminiscent of where I was raised but furnished to my taste, is this great mixture of where I came from and where I am going, a collection of memories from the past and dreams of the future." Since Wilson finished work on the house, only two photo shoots have taken place there. "It's a more mature, subdued, Frank Sinatra kind of place," On Location's Maier says. "I could see it being very attractive for sophisticated fashion shoots and luxury brands." As much as he has transformed it, the house has changed Wilson even more. It has become home. And even if he never rents it out again, it's working for him. Would you like to respond to this story? If so Click Here to visit our forums. 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