There’s no denying that Bette Davis is Hollywood royalty. But despite her best efforts at chewing up the scenery, even she couldn’t save the 1976 supernatural horror film “Burnt Offerings.” Based upon Robert Marasco’s 1973 novel of the same name, the dark tale sees New York writer Ben Roth (Oliver Reed), his wife Marian (Karen Black), son David (Lee Montgomery) and elderly aunt Elizabeth (Davis) taking up residence at a leased Long Island mansion one fateful summer. As the season progresses, the house slowly begins to possess each member of the family, using them as sacrifices – burnt offerings, if you will – in order to restore itself to its original grandeur.
Largely considered a dud, Orlando Sentinel Star reviewer Dean Johnson had some particularly harsh words for the film upon its release, writing “‘Burnt Offerings,’ huh? ‘Boring Offerings’ might have been more fitting. Or ‘Banal Offerings.’ Or, to further a point, take a look at the ‘Burnt Offerings’ initials. There’s a review for you in two letters.” Yikes! Johnson even takes issue with the Neoclassical Revival pad at the center of the story, concluding, “This is one big old house that isn’t even interesting set-wise.” On that point, Ben, I am going to have to politely disagree. The Roths’ summer rental is nothing short of spectacular!
Said to be at 17 Shore Rd., the mansion can actually be found standing on a grassy 50-acre plot about 20 miles east of San Francisco at 2960 Peralta Oaks Ct. in Oakland. Known as the Dunsmuir Hellman Historic Estate, the striking property was originally built in 1899 for Alexander Dunsmuir, son of British Columbia coal magnate Robert Dunsmuir. A hard-partying playboy, Alexander fell in love with Josephine Wallace, his “favorite bartender’s wife” according to the Oakland Mom blog, shortly after moving to San Francisco in 1878. While that makes for a good story, per the Oakland Tribune Josephine’s husband, Waller (yes, his name was Waller Wallace!) actually worked as the “head usher at the old California Theater in San Francisco in addition to being a law clerk, baseball player and sports writer.” Regardless of his employment history, Josephine quickly ditched him to take up with the much wealthier Alexander, whom she dated for a whopping two decades before eventually tying the knot. Prior to the wedding, Dunsmuir commissioned local San Francisco architect J. Eugene Freeman to design a three-story, 37-room estate on a leafy 600-acre plot near the Oakland foothills as a gift for his soon-to-be bride.
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Image Credit: Dunsmuir Hellman Historic Estate The luxe digs took nine months to complete, setting Alexander back $350,000 – about $11.5 million today. The 20-bedroom, 10-bath estate boasted such lavish appointments as fine wood paneling, silk wallpapering, parquet flooring (each room with its own unique pattern), an incredible 10 fireplaces and a formal entry capped by a Tiffany-style leaded-glass dome measuring 12 feet in diameter. The 16,224-square-foot property also included staff quarters with live-in accommodations for 12 as well as an employee dining room with a fireplace and call box, the latter of which a 1973 Sacramento Bee article noted was watched over 24/7 by a housekeeper who was tasked with dispatching “the appropriate servant the family needed” at any time of the day or night.
Alexander and Josephine tied the knot at the estate on December 21, 1899. Sadly, the merger was short-lived. Dunsmuir passed away unexpectedly the following month while honeymooning with his new bride in New York. Josephine subsequently retreated to the house her husband had built for her, where she passed away from lung cancer just a little over a year later. The property was subsequently bequeathed to Josephine’s daughter from her first marriage, actress Edna Wallace Hopper (aka the “eternal flapper”), who in turn leased it for several summers to I.W. Hellman Jr., son of Los Angeles’ very first banker, Isaias W. Hellman.
Isaias Jr. eventually purchased the place in January 1906. Four months later, the infamous Great Quake tore through San Francisco and the Hellman family promptly headed to Oakland to take refuge in their new home. The Hellman’s eldest son, I. W. Hellman III, recalled to the Daily News-Post in 1963, “Our family was hurriedly packed in our Columbia automobile and we drove to Dunsmuir House. There must have been 20 or 30 members of the family plus servants living in Dunsmuir House for days following the earthquake.” The property continued to provide refuge to the Hellmans for decades to come.
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Image Credit: Dunsmuir Hellman Historic Estate Isaias and his wife updated and expanded the estate during their tenure, adding water and electricity to the premises, as well as such luxe amenities as a golf course, a conservatory, tennis and croquet courts and a garden maze. They also dotted their pastoral wonderland with countless varieties of trees, including Camperdown Elms, Bunya pines and Hornbeams, and populated it with horses, ducks, deer and other animals, all of which wandered the grounds freely. Mrs. Hellman was also responsible for adding a pool and a Mission-style bathhouse. I.W. Hellman III told the Oakland Tribune, “My brother, Fred, and I often hiked all the way down to San Leandro Bay to swim. Mother wasn’t happy with the water there and that’s how the big swimming pool happened to be installed.”
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Image Credit: David Bell The family also entertained on the premises regularly, inviting all of the local movers and shakers of the day. A former gardener (one of eight who worked full-time at the property!) told the Tribune that there would often be “more millionaires standing out there on the lawn than you can find on Wall Street when the stock market opens.”
I.W. Hellman passed away in 1920 and his widow continued to own the estate and summer on the premises until her own passing in 1959. Three years later, the City of Oakland purchased the house with plans to utilize it as a conference center. That idea eventually fell through and today, the Dunsmuir Hellman Historic Estate is a popular tourist attraction. While typically open to the public for docent-led and self-guided tours, as well as holiday events, due to the pandemic, the grounds are currently closed until further notice. The site does remain available as a wedding and special events venue, however, as well as for filming.
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Image Credit: Dunsmuir Hellman Historic Estate For the “Burnt Offerings” shoot, the estate was made to look dilapidated, with decaying trees and plants brought in to cover the green grass and rich foliage typically surrounding it. In reality, the mansion more closely resembles its restored appearance at the end of the film, after it has completely regenerated itself by picking off members of the Roth family one by one.
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Image Credit: Dunsmuir Hellman Historic Estate The movie, which was shot in its entirety on the Dunsmuir grounds, made extensive use of both the inside and outside of the estate. The interior was also made to appear disheveled. According to AFI, “Many of the 37 rooms in the house were re-papered from a stark white fine linen wall covering to a distinctive dark pattern to give a foreboding mood.” In real life, the inside of the house (decorated for Christmas above) is majestic, a pristine turn-of-the-century landmark and an Oakland gem!
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Image Credit: AVCO Embassy Pictures Thanks to its massive size, historic architecture and secluded acreage, the Dunsmuir Hellman Estate is a perfect fit for productions of a scary nature and, as such, has been pegged to serve as a backdrop in a number of horror flicks. In the 1979 cult classic “Phantasm,” it masquerades as Morningside Mortuary, the lair of the Tall Man (Angus Scrimm), a “malevolent undertaker,” who, as described by Wikipedia, “turns the dead of Earth into dwarf zombies to be sent to his planet and used as slaves.”
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Image Credit: New World Pictures It appears as the island home of winemaker Dr. Elson Po (James Hong) who incorporates the blood of the young into his varietals in order to secure himself eternal youth in the poorly-regarded 1989 film “The Vineyard.”
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Image Credit: Gravitas Ventures And it plays the “old Brandt house,” a notorious haunted mansion that a group of friends infiltrates late one night in the 2018 horror film “Delirium.”
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Image Credit: TriStar Pictures The property has appeared in several productions of the non-horror variety, as well, including the 1993 black comedy “So I Married an Axe Murderer,” in which it masquerades as the Poet’s Corner bed and breakfast, where Charlie Mackenzie (Mike Myers) and Harriet Michaels (Nancy Travis) honeymoon. The exterior of the mansion was digitally altered for the role, with a tower added to the third story and an ominously jagged mountain range drawn into the background.
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Image Credit: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer James Bond (Roger Moore) engages in an epic shootout there, and rescues heiress Stacey Sutton (Tanya Roberts), in 1985’s “A View to a Kill.”
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Image Credit: Warner Bros. It’s the residence of governor Henry Lowenstein (Anthony Zerbe), where journalist Steve Everett (Clint Eastwood) attempts to secure a stay of execution for a death row inmate, in the 1999 thriller “True Crime.”
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Image Credit: Paramount And it pops up as the childhood home of Boz Bishop (Christian J. Meoli) in the season six episode of “Nash Bridges” titled “End Game,” which aired in 2000.