FARRELL HOUSE

Location: Jennifer Farrell lived at 32 Rexford Drive on the corner of Bel Air Drive in Beverly Hills near Los Angeles, California. Today, the house is no longer on the celebrity tour in order to dissuade curiosity-seekers.

Description: Once called Blonde Paradise, the Mediterranean two-story yellow stucco mansion has a tiled roof, four chimneys, twelve bedrooms and six bathrooms. The backyard patio includes an hourglass shaped swimming pool, hot tub, pool house and garden plus a guest cottage and two-car garage.

Ghostly Manifestations: Hollywood is an area full of ghost stories. Numerous hopefuls travel out there in search of fame, fortune and recognition of their talents only to have them destroyed by the elite club known as show business. Few get in, and the few that get in don’t let anyone else in. Jennifer Farrell was one of the lucky ones and her home has served as inspiration for many other hopefuls. If the rumors are true, maybe you can still find her inside, and ask for advice or a good contact.

Rumors that the place was haunted by the late star started shortly after 1982. Several sorority girls heard a woman’s voice yelling at them to get out of the house. Soon after, tour buses starting to go by had passengers asking about the Jennifer impersonator who leaned out the window and waved exuberantly and joyfully at the bus as Jennifer Farrell often did in her life. Sometimes she doesn’t appear at all, but numerous witnesses have seen a window pop open as the bus stops outside the front gates.

George Elliott, Jennifer's lawyer, later acquired the house, owning the house from 1983 to 1992. Not much of a believer in ghosts, he claims he never saw or experienced anything that he couldn’t explain. His son, Joey, on the other hand was soon reporting a long list of strange occurrences ranging from footsteps from empty halls and objects that moved around by themselves. Now in his late thirties, Joseph “Joey” Elliott is now a teacher at Los Angeles High School. He admits he wanted to nostalgically buy the house when his parents wanted to move into a smaller place, but the finances just weren’t there.

“I was never scared.” Writers and producers of paranormal TV shows often interview Elliott. “It’s hard to be scared of a friendly spirit that watches over you and takes care of you. Both my sister and I felt Jennifer in the house, and maybe my mom. Dad just wasn’t open to the experience despite having worked for her.”

“We experienced a lot of the typical ghost stuff.” Elliott continues. “There were footsteps, doors that closed by themselves, curtains sometimes swayed on their own. I remember once I was with my dad in the back yard trying to get the barbecue to work and I got a chill up my back. You know it’s a weird chill when you’re standing in the sun and its ninety-five degrees out. We both heard a woman’s laughter coming from an upstairs window and looked up to see if my mom was watching us, but she wasn’t. I don’t think it was anyway, because my mom doesn’t laugh like that. My father once said it was someone’s voice carried by the wind. I just sort of pretended to agree, but a few minutes later, I looked up to the window again and, I think, I think, I actually saw her. Jennifer. She was watching us from my sister’s room.”

In the first few months living in the house, Joey had tried to get his parents to believe him that Jennifer's spirit was still in the house. His sister would recall him having arguments and yelling in his bedroom and once peeked in and saw him having a conversation to empty space. Sometimes, Joey seemed to get answers to obscure questions from out of no where. When it seemed that he was having a nervous breakdown, George Elliott hired a disreputable fortune teller to fake an exorcism in order to make him believe that Jennifer was exorcised from the the house. Joey calmed after that, but Jennifer's spirit never really went away. He might have found solace or compassion for her trapped spirit, but he never let her go. His sister meanwhile felt Jennifer sometimes checking in on her late at night.

Now a twenty-something contractor, Marilyn Elliott doesn’t have many memories of anything unusual from her years living in the Farrell House. She does recall her father tried several times to paint over the house’s yellow color with white, but the yellow continued returning.

“Yellow and pink are two colors very hard to cover up.” She admits. “We had the same trouble trying to paint Jayne Mansfield’s Pink Palace when Ringo Starr wanted to sell it, but the original colors kept returning despite what sort of paint we used.”

Joey also believes Jennifer became very much more active in September 1979 when a nude photo she had done in her years as a struggling actress turned up. Joey's father had found it in the house and wanted to sell it, but soon everyone in the house began hearing screams from the attic and frustrated footsteps of a woman in heels wandering the halls and downstairs. In order to placate the ghost, Joey had to stand up to his father and implore him not to auction off the photo in order that the spirit would rest. Despite the occurrences, George Elliott recanted and refused to sell the photo, later locking it up in a safe deposit box out of respect for his deceased client, but he never really believed Jennifer was still in the house.

“0ur mom started to believe us a bit more about Jennifer haunting the house about a year before dad sold the place.” Joseph Elliott continues. “She said she’d be coming home and she’d see an curtain pull back as if someone was peeking out. First few times, she probably thinks it was dad, but when he wasn’t home, she’d think a strange person was lurking through the house. Finally, I’d tell her, ‘Mom, it’s just the ghost.’ She probably didn’t believe me at first, but later on, she would start talking to her. ‘Hi Jen, are you in here? I’m just getting dinner ready. Please don’t scare me.’”

“One time, mom heard a little dog barking in the rumpus room in the basement.” He continues. “She’d send Dad down there to catch what we thought was a dog that had wandered into our house by mistake, but he‘d never find it. We’d all hear these barking sounds or the sounds of little feet scratching the wood floors, but there wouldn’t be a dog in sight. Later on, I got a copy of the only biography ever done on Jennifer Farrell and it revealed she was a dog lover. In her life, she had rescued three Chihuahuas, a Pekingese and a Pug from the local shelter and kept them in the house. After her death, they were adopted by her colleagues from the studio.”

“The last time I saw her,” Joseph Elliott responds a bit dismayed. “Was after dad sold the house. I had come back to the house to get several things I’d left behind after moving into my own place and, I think it was her, I hope it was her, and I heard someone in the pool. There were the sounds of splashing and laughing as someone was in the pool and I looked out my window and saw…….” He pauses as if looking for the right words. “This extremely beautiful blonde woman in a white bikini tanning by the edge of the pool. I rushed down the stairs, through the foyer and the dining room stood outside on the patio, and she was gone. My first and only really good look at her, and I messed up by frightening her away. I think she looks better in now than she did in life.”

At one point, there were plans to create a movie called "The Jennifer Farrell Story" about Jennifer's life. Had the movie been completed, it would have had scenes taped in her house, but while casting directors were deluged by young beautiful and bosomy actresses, one extra developed a friendship with one of the actresses. The actress looked remarkably like Jennifer and had intimate knowledge of the tragic star's life which she later claimed she had culled from intense research. She was going to play Jennifer in the movie, but for some reason the movie was never made and she vanished to be never seen again. When stories started revealing Jennifer's ghost might still be in the house, that extra started wondering if he had met and encountered the ghost for himself.

The Hollywood tours no longer stop outside the house, but just before the tours stopped in 1993, one tourist driving by the house took an excellent picture of the front of the house as he leaned out of his bus window. The remarkable shot shows the sun glistening off the empty house, every nuance and detail of the structure just perfect. Standing just inside the glass windows on the balcony is the nearly obvious presence of a woman in white with short blonde hair waving to the guests out front.

History: Built by Silent Film star Ricardo Laughingwell in 1927, the house was a gift to Jennifer from her studio in 1963. For the fourteen years she lived there, she threw countless parties and even used her home to film movies and house ceremonies from weddings to birthday parties. After her death, the house was sold briefly to a young couple who lived there for less than a few months until a fan from a studio tour died while climbing over the front wall to get into the property. Sitting empty for a while, in 1982, the house was being used as a sorority for several girls from nearby UCLA. Engaged in sex, drugs and alcohol, they reportedly abandoned the house after a strange voice yelled at them “Get Out !!!” several times in the middle of the night. It was sold the next year to George Elliott, Jennifer's lawyer from New York City, and his wife, Susan. They had two kids: Joseph (14) and Marilyn (8) at the time. Joseph is now a history teacher at Los Angeles High School.

Today, the house is owned by television personality Alan Brady from New York City. While he rarely stays in the house, he does rent it out for use as an exterior set in television and the movies. One recent movie, "Now and Forever," set in 1970s Hollywood, has a scene depicting a fictitious party once supposedly thrown by Jennifer Farrell after the release of one of her movies. Filmed at Jennifer's old mansion, Jennifer was played by famed actress Alex Young. In the house, Young felt she was being guided and controlled by Jennifer's spirit.

"It was a very strong and powerful presence." She remarks in Tandamount Studios' DVD release of the film. "I got the feeling that Jennifer really loved acting, and because of her, I was able to play Jennifer exactly how she was in life. She loved life, she loved people, and she was a true caring and nurturing spirit. That film was three years ago for me and I still believe she is guiding my career today because I had the honor to play her."

Identity of Ghost: Jennifer Farrell was an obscure actress who only made about twenty-two films in her career. Born January 29, 1930 in Langford, Illinois and a high school drop-out at 17, she had tried to break out of the typical “dumb blonde” stereotype by playing intelligent blondes with a sort of wise-cracking Eve Arden personality when in real life she was actually one of the friendliest and warm actresses in the business. She had won several beauty contests before she became 24. The wife of a studio executive reportedly started her career by saying she was beautiful enough for the movies. Jennifer’s first starring role was the obscure 1954 film, “So This Is London.” Cast almost entirely in B-Movies, she never got enough roles to prove her full talent and she actually made a bigger career out of being a pin-up. Blessed with a 163 IQ, she managed most of her own career and in 1963, Mammoth Pictures in Hollywood offered her a role in a TV-Series called “Heartbreak Hospital” which also starred up-and-coming actress Ginger Grant. Jennifer also discovered she had been diagnosed with advanced leukemia and was prescribed with pills with a high lead content by her doctor. Accidentally poisoning herself before her career ever really started, her body was found in bed by her housekeeper on August 5, 1978. Later tabloid legends claimed Jennifer had been backed up over by an ice cream truck because when she was alive she loved ice cream and often bought all the neighborhood kids ice cream. Jennifer's closest friends in the movie industry have continued this urban legend to cover up the medical controversy of her death.

Comments: Jennifer Slept Here, NBC-TV (1983-1984) Hauntings loosely based on Jayne Mansfield’s Pink Palace in Los Angeles, California and Elvis Presley's Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee among others. Jennifer’s career based on that of Allison Hayes (1930-1977).

Ricardo Laughingwell from "Gilligan’s Island", Episode “Castaway Pictures Presents”

Alan Brady from "The Dick Van Dyke Show" (1961-1966)

Mammoth Pictures from "The Beverly Hillbillies," Episode “Jed Becomes a Movie Mogul”

Ginger Grant from "Gilligan’s Island" (1964-1967)

Alex Young from "I'm With Her" (2003-2005)

Tandamount Studios from "Arrested Development" (2003-2006)

Langford, Illinois from "Roseanne" (1988-1995)


Jennifer Slept Here (Theme Song)

(Hello, it's me, and only you can see me!!)

I just saw the most beautiful ghost in the world
She slept here.
I just saw the most outrageous kind of a girl
She lives here.
Jennifer, what are you doing to me
when out of my life you appear?
They say the stars don't shine as bright since you left here.

Jennifer slept here!
She lives here
She loved here, laughed here and wept here.
She slept here.
But she never really left here.

Jennifer slept here!

(Sung by Joey Scarbury who also recorded the theme to "The Greatest American Hero")