Meet David Silverman, the Hollywood Mansion Whisperer
For David Silverman, nothing can say more about the history and glamour of Los Angeles than a house. In 2018, after 19 years working in entertainment law, the L.A. native took a sharp career detour and launched L.A. House Histories, producing custom books for homeowners based on months of intensive investigation into the story behind their residence. Hollywood, history, and architecture that’s very L.A. all converge in the work of Silverman, who is quickly becoming a go to for curious homeowners and real estate professionals.
It all started as a hobby. Silverman began by tracing the history of his sister’s 1920s Holmby Hills home for a birthday gift in 2013. What began as a fun project resulted in a 125-page book and he picked the pursuit back up a few years later, bringing in a few key clients. “I decided to do more of them, and wasn’t really happy being a lawyer, and it was after meeting [publisher and art collector] Benedikt Taschen and doing his house, that things took off,” he recalls. Taschen introduced Silverman to investor and philanthropist Nicolas Berggruen who also enlisted him. “I think it was the name recognition from those two clients and their famous houses that I was able to get publicity and do more,” Silverman says. He’s since done books on the former homes of Louis B. Mayer’s daughter Edie Goetz, Frank Sinatra, and Shirley Temple.
When Silverman discovered online research early in his law school career, he fell in love. “The idea of having all these newspapers, magazines at your fingertips, we take it for granted now, but back then it was just this marvel to me,” he says. “I missed being creative and working with visual stuff. So, being able to meld all those interests was just a joy and to be able to do something joyful was sorely missed.” His lengthy tenure working in legal affairs for Columbia Pictures left him with critical insight into the old Hollywood figures behind L.A.’s most interesting homes. “I did the talent deals for Columbia: movies, actor, writer, producer, director deals. Knowing the business aspects of the business makes me understand more about who these people were and what they did when I read about them, whether it’s a studio head or a producer,” he explains. “I think one of the fun aspects of what I do is that while it certainly works in other areas of the country or the world, I think it’s probably the best in L.A., because of old Hollywood.”
Silverman tackles each project with a methodical approach and the same rigor in research that he applied to his legal career. It begins with the hiring of a property title researcher who locates the names of all the past owners of the home. “You have to look through old microfilm and old volumes of books. Only the recent dates or the recent deeds are scanned. That way you know all the dates of the purchases and, in some cases, the purchase price and the names of the owners,” he says. He pores over celebrity interviews and biographies, detailing even the tiniest details. He reaches out to any living past owners and their relatives, which often yields old photos, notes, and guest lists. “Part of what I like to offer my clients is not only the book, but an experience. Hopefully, they’ll get to meet some of the past owners, or their family, and they’ll see old home movies and get to share in old stories. It’s kind of an interactive history experience.”
On the advice of his real estate agent, Mark Fletcher contacted Silverman after purchasing a modernist Beverly Hills home he wanted to learn more about. “We reached out to him to try to get a sense if there might be any information about the architect himself, whose name we didn't recognize, and to help guide us, to act as a sort of compass to do a thoughtful restoration of the house,” he says. “He designed this impeccable document, quite grand document, that can sit out on the table and acts as an object in itself, that documents the whole history of the house and the restoration process and where we are now.”
Silverman’s books take between one to two years and complete. They typically top off at 200 pages, though those on some of the more storied homes can go up to 400. His fee begins at $25,000 and clients also cover the costs of printing, a graphic designer, and any additional fees.
Real estate agent Joyce Rey has recruited Silverman for projects for her clients, including the sellers of a home once owned by Sammy Davis, Jr. She’s a listing agent on Harry Warner’s old home, currently on the market for $32.5 million and plans to send any eventual owners right Silverman’s way. “He’s better than any personal investigator, except he does it for houses.”
For a current project on a Tyrone Power home, Silverman has unearthed old photos, party anecdotes, and details of the yoga classes Power’s wife held at the home in the 1950s. Work on another book has yielded a treasure trove of photos and home movies. “[You can see] it the way it looked when it was built and the home movies of little kids playing at the house and jumping around in the pool. It’s this really evocative connection that, to me at least, is not just enabling the owner to restore it to the way it used to look or [fulfill] curiosity, but hopefully give them this real connection,” Silverman says.
Taschen’s home was built for studio executive David O. Selznick and when Silverman began researching it, he reached out to Danny Selznick, David’s sole surviving child. Silverman and Selznick, now in his eighties and living at the Motion Picture Country House, a retirement residence for those who worked in the entertainment industry, spoke extensively about his years in the home, when guests like Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant would come over for movie nights. “He went over to the house twice and walked us around the house telling us about the rooms and telling us what was where,” Silverman says. Selznick had his home movies put on a DVD for Taschen and he and Silverman became friends.
The work has given Silverman tremendous joy and purpose, and he considers it an upgrade from his first career. “Being a transactional entertainment lawyer is very antagonistic and you’re basically just arguing with the other side about how many first-class tickets their client should get or where their credit should be and things like that; nit-picky things in the contract,” he says. “This is just purely something that’s delightful and brings people wonder.”
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