DAVID WALKER: She thought it was too tacky to use in the house. She decided to solder the pieces together with wire, like in the old days, and turn it into her front gate.
Mills-Murray called the police, but no charges were filed. The next day, the gate was gone. Fox was convinced Mills-Murray had stolen it, but she had no proof. With Fox’s job at the Getty winding down, she quit and devoted all her energies to the Twenty Mile House.
PAUL JELLINEK: I definitely noticed a different energy once Bernadette quit. I’d show up with students, and all she’d talk about was the White Castle and how ugly it was, how much they wasted. It was all true, but it had nothing to do with architecture.
The White Castle was finally completed. Its crowning touch was a million dollars’ worth of California fan palms planted along the shared driveway, each lowered into place by helicopter. Fox became furious that her entry now looked like a Ritz-Carlton. She complained, but Mills-Murray sent over the title report clearly specifying that his easement over her property was for “ingress and egress” and “landscaping decisions and maintenance.”
DAVID WALKER: Twenty years later, any time I hear the words “easement,” “ingress,” or “egress,” I still get sick to my stomach. Bernadette would not stop ranting about it. I started to wear a Walkman so I could tune her out.
Mills-Murray decided to christen his new home by hosting a lavish Oscar after-party. He hired Prince to play in the backyard. Lack of parking is always an issue along Mulholland Drive, so Mills-Murray hired a valet. The day before the party, Fox eavesdropped on Mills-Murray’s assistant as she walked the driveway with the head valet, figuring out where to park a hundred cars. Fox notified a dozen towing companies that cars were going to be illegally parked on her driveway.
During the party, while the valets snuck into the backyard to watch Prince perform “Let’s Go Crazy,” Fox waved in the idling fleet of tow trucks. In a flash, twenty cars were towed. When a raging Mills-Murray confronted Fox, she calmly produced the property title, which stated the driveway was for “ingress and egress.” Not parking cars.
PAUL JELLINEK: Elgie and Bernadette were living at Beeber Bifocal at the time, with the idea they would move into the Twenty Mile House and start a family. But Elgie was growing distraught by what the neighbor feud was doing to Bernadette. There was no way he was going to move into that house. I told him to wait, that things might change.
One April morning in 1992, Fox received a phone call. “Are you Bernadette Fox?” the voice asked. “Are you alone?”
The caller told her she’d been awarded a MacArthur “genius” grant. It had never before been given to an architect. The $500,000 grant is awarded to “talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction.”
PAUL JELLINEK: A friend of mine in Chicago who was affiliated with the MacArthur Foundation — I don’t even know how, the whole thing’s so mysterious — asked me what I thought was the most exciting thing going on in architecture. I told him the truth — Bernadette Fox’s house. Who the hell knew what she was exactly — an architect, an outsider artist, a lady who liked working with her hands, a glorified dumpster-diver. I just knew her houses felt good to walk into.
It was ’92, and there was talk of green architecture, but this was before LEED, before the Green Building Council, a decade before Dwell. Sure, environmental architecture had been around for decades, but beauty wasn’t a priority.
My friend from Chicago came out with a big group. No doubt they expected some ugly-ass yurt made out of license plates and tires. But when they walked into the Twenty Mile House, they started laughing, that’s how gorgeous it was. A sparkling glass box with clean lines, not an inch of drywall or paint. The floors were concrete; the walls and ceiling, wood; the counters, exposed aggregate with bits of broken glass for translucent color. Even with all those warm materials, it felt lighter inside than outside.
That day, Bernadette was building the garage, pouring concrete into forms and doing tilt-up walls. The MacArthur guys took off their suit jackets, rolled up their sleeves, and helped. That’s when I knew she’d won it.
Receiving this recognition enabled Fox to let go of the Twenty Mile House and put it on the market.
JUDY TOLL: Bernadette told me she wanted to list the house and look for another piece of property without a shared driveway. Having Nigel Mills-Murray next door was very good for her property values. I snapped some pictures and told her I’d run some comps.
When I got to my office, I had a message on my answering machine. It was from a business manager I worked with often, who had heard the house was for sale. I told him we wouldn’t be listing it for a couple of months, but he was an architecture buff and wanted to own the house that won the “Genius award.”
We ate at Spago to celebrate, me, Bernadette, and her darling husband. You should have seen the two of them. He was so proud of her. She had just won a big award and made a killing on the house. What husband wouldn’t be proud? During dessert, he took out a little box and gave it to Bernadette. Inside was a silver locket with a yellow photograph inside, of a severe and disturbed-looking girl.
“It’s Saint Bernadette,” Elgie said. “Our Lady of Lourdes. She had visions, eighteen in all. You had your first vision with Beeber Bifocal. You had your second vision with the Twenty Mile House. Here’s to sixteen more.”
Bernadette started crying. I started crying. He started crying. The three of us were in a puddle when the waiter came with the check.
At that lunch, that’s when they decided to go to Europe. They wanted to see Lourdes, home of Saint Bernadette. It was all just so sweet. They had the whole world ahead of them.
Bernadette still needed to get the house photographed for her portfolio. If she waited a month, it would give the garden time to fill in. So she decided to do it after they returned. I called the buyer and asked if this was acceptable. He said, Yes, of course.
PAUL JELLINEK: Everyone thinks I was so close to Bernadette, but I really didn’t talk to her all that much. It was the fall and I had a new group of students. I wanted to show them the Twenty Mile House. I knew Bernadette had gone to Europe. Still, I did what I always did, left a message to say I’d be stopping by the Twenty Mile house with my class. I had a key.
I turned off of Mulholland and saw that Bernadette’s gate was open, which was the first weird thing. I drove up and got out of my car. It took me a second to understand what I was seeing: a bulldozer was demolishing the house! Three bulldozers, actually, pushing into walls, breaking glass, crunching beams, just smashing and flattening the furniture, lights, windows, cabinets. It was so fucking loud, which made it more confusing.
I had no idea what was going on. I didn’t even know she’d sold the house. I ran up to one of the bulldozers and literally pulled the guy off and screamed at him, “What the hell are you doing?” But he didn’t speak English.
There were no cell phones back then. I had my students form a chain in front of the bulldozers, then I drove as fast as I could to Hollywood Boulevard, to the nearest pay phone. I called Bernadette and got her answering machine. “What the hell are you doing?” I screamed into it. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. You don’t just go off to Europe and destroy your house!”