The pool with the cinderblock walls

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Revision as of 02:59, 28 January 2020 by Sneeuwbol (talk | contribs) (→‎Home to the Lyric Boys: Ballog text quoted en bloc)

The pool with the cinderblock walls was in the back yard of the house on Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles's Hollywood Hills that served from the mid-60s to 1973 as Lyric International's studio; as the home of Lyric's owner, Billy Byars, Jr.; as the residence of some of the Lyric Boys; and as permanent or temporary temporary housing for Lyric collaborators. The products in Lyric's catalog, including magazines, films and photo sets, feature extensive nudity by the Lyric boys and other boys and young men, and many were shot in the pool and the house. The house "was for a while a haven for adult homosexuals and male teenagers."[1]

Spectacular backdrop

The house at the summit of the Hollywood Hills has views west and south to Los Angeles and the Pacific and north to the San Fernando Valley. At least two Lyric films, Swim Party and Spring Break, featuring Peter Glawson and others of the Lyric boys, mostly in the nude, were filmed around the pool with the cinderblock walls. Swim Party had panoramic shots of the views that made it possible to identify the location.[2]Not only the backyard but the house's interior served as a backdrop for photos. The living room, a "bachelor pad [which] boasts massive oaken beams and other touches of baronial elegance" [Viola Hegyi Swisher, "Generating "The Genesis Children", After Dark, September 1972, p. 18] appeared in Lyric's magazines with nude boys around its pool table.

The Lyric portfolio did not include pornography, but its offerings were distributed through DOM/Lyric, a collaboration with Guy Strait, who did however produce pornography including child pornography, and lived only a few miles from the Lyric studio.[3] There's no indication Strait filmed at home: police claimed a film made in a hotel led them to him in 1973,(needs source) and in his 1976 arrest the appellate court said, "the defendant came to the Holiday Inn in Rockford, Illinois, in March of 1972, to shoot a pornographic movie"[4]

Home to the Lyric Boys

In 2006, Anthony Aikman, director of The Genesis Children, told in an interview of traveling to Los Angeles after the end of filming, along with the Lyric boys, the film's adult actor, Vincent Child, Byars and his factorum William Johnson:

This busy house also included Byars pet snake, which was allowed free roam of the house, and a Beddington Terrier dog. One of Billy's only rules at the house was that if you wanted to swim in the pool you had to swim naked.

On one occasion, the dog got loose and everyone started to run naked down the road to try to catch it. The group was almost run over by a shocked elderly couple coming around the corner in their car. Aikman claims that the car actually left the pavement and hit a tree, resulting in the fire brigade racing up Mulholland with sirens and bells wailing. The dog can be seen in many Lyric photo shoots and short films shot at the pool location.

Since several of the "Lyric boys" were under legal custody of Byars as foster children, on one occasion the Los Angeles County Department of Child Services notified Byars that they would be coming by the house the next day for an inspection/visitation. Byars and friends quickly went on a shopping trip to buy books, tables and a portable blackboard. By the time the Child Services officials came to inspect the next day, Byars had set up an outdoor classroom complete with Vincent Child, black cape and all, acting as the boys teacher. Byars received rave reviews by the impressed county officials.[5]

Varied houseguests

When Anthony Aikman, director of The Genesis Children, came to Los Angeles to edit the film, he stayed at the house on Mulholland Drive. Aikman found a strange man named Teeterman there. Teeterman slept in a coffin in the lower level of the house and had a job at the Hollywood Wax Museum where he dressed up in a costume and played the Mechanical Man while standing outside the museum to attract customers. Teeterman once showed Aikman an old 8mm film of himself, dressed in a vampire's costume, and Billy Byars trolling through a cemetery late at night. The cemetery was supposedly located out in the Midwest. [Interview with Aikman, 2006, by Ballog]

Vincent Child, the adult actor in The Genesis Children, stayed at the house for a while on completion of the film. William Johnson, Byars´s factorum, may have been a permanent resident.[Interview with Aikman, 2006, by Ballog]

The house today

The house today and several of its neighbors make up "The Hills Treatment Center", listed in Psychology Today as a place which "offers a fantastic educational and therapeutic drug and alcohol rehabilitation experience."[6] Previously it was Wonderland Treatment Center.[7] The "massive oaken beams" have been painted an inoffensive white, the pool deck has been tiled, and other indignities have been inflicted on the architect's work.

The house as real estate

The house is in Los Angeles, California in the Hollywood Hills between Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley. More specifically, it is at 8181 and 8207 Mulholland Drive just west of Laurel Canyon Boulevard. The place is latitude 34°7'21.85" N (34.122736), longitude 118°22'37.35" W (-118.377042).

Billy Byars, Jr. let people believe he owned the house but he actually rented it from the owner.[8]

Zillow.com tracks real estate values on a house-to-house basis, and a decade ago listed the house as a duplex, divided as 8181 and 8207 Mulholland Drive. 8181 is described as two bedrooms, one bath, five rooms total, 767 square feet of construction and 13,070 square feet (0.3 acres) of land. 8207 is four bedrooms, three baths, 2,624 square feet, on 19,600 sq ft (0.45 acres) of land. The total would be 3,391 square feet, with six bedrooms and four baths, on a three-quarter acre lot. In January, 2020, Zillow does not show 8181 and lists 8207 as being 2 bedrooms, 2 baths and 1,857 sq ft, which is inconsistent with aerial photographs which show no substantial change in the house. Zillow claims the house was built in 1961.[9]

Related places

Lyric's activities were not confined to the pool with the cinderblock walls. When arrested in the 1973 scandal, Lyric partner and pornographer Guy Strait lived 2.4 miles away by road, at 7718 Skyhill Drive, Studio City. That is currently assessed as having 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, and 2,786 sq ft, and having been built in 1960 but having an "effective year" of 1965, which suggests it may have been expanded since Guy Strait lived there.[10] Lyric had an office at the Crossroads of the World complex in Hollywood, 4.2 miles away down Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Sunset Boulevard. The Gold Cup, famed "chicken" hangout, was only 3.2 miles away, down Laurel Canyon and Hollywood Boulevard. From Strait's house to the Gold Cup is only 3.9 miles straight down US 101.


External links

References

  1. ↑ Summers, Anthony (2003). Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. p. 337. ISBN 0-399-13800-5. 
  2. ↑ [http://www.angelfire.com/retro2/sneeuwbol/tech.html How the pool was found.
  3. ↑ Pair Arraigned in Case Involving Homosexuals. The Van Nuys News. 7 September 1973, p. 8
  4. ↑ 52 Ill. App.3d 599 (1977) 367 N.E.2d 768
  5. ↑ Usenet Post by "Edward Bear", who also used "Ballog", on Genesis Children.
  6. ↑ The Hills treatment center on Psychology Today website.
  7. ↑ Wonderland listing
  8. ↑ Usenet Post by Edward Bear/Ballog gives the actual owner's name, citing the Los Angeles County Assessor's Office
  9. ↑ 8207 Mulholland Drive on Zillow
  10. ↑ 7718 Skyhill Drive listing at Los Angeles Count Assessor's Office
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