Brittany Murphy Calls L.A.’s Famed Chandler Estate Home in ‘Just Married’

Just a few of the notables to call the place home throughout its 108-year history include Walter Kilbourne Tuller, a prominent Los Angeles attorney who served as a Major in the U.S. Army during World War I, worked as a director of the L.A. Chamber of Commerce and helped to revise California’s Penal Code in 1927. Tuller passed away at the property in September 1939, after falling victim to a heart attack at the age of 52.

Actor Lewis Stone, known for playing Judge James Hardy in MGM’s “Andy Hardy” movies, later moved into the abode. He, too, passed away on the premises, succumbing to a heart attack on September 12, 1953 following a confrontation with a group of boys who had broken into his yard to vandalize it. Stone’s star-studded funeral was held at the estate with Lionel Barrymore, Louis B. Mayer, Eddie Mannix, Nicholas Schenck, Charles Ruggles, Robert Young, Dore Schary and Frank Lloyd all serving as pallbearers. 

It is Stone’s widow who sold the property to Dorothy Chandler and her husband, longtime Los Angeles Times publisher Norman, in 1956. The couple promptly dubbed the place “Los Tiempos,” Spanish for “The Times.”

The Chandlers extensively remodeled the mansion upon moving in, outfitting the interior with paneling, textiles and fixtures brought in from Europe. According to a Los Angeles Times article, the couple imported the entire music room (above) from a castle near Munich where it once served as a rehearsal space for Mozart! Much of the room’s original detailing is incredibly still intact today. As recent owner Timothy Corrigan told the paper, “The insets in the walls are hand-painted silk boiserie. They’re over 200 years old. They’re so fragile, they feel like parchment paper. I had to bring in conservators from LACMA to clean them.”

During Dorothy and Norman’s tenure, the home’s luxurious living spaces regularly played host to the elite of both Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon are all said to have spent time at the estate, earning it the nickname “The White House of the West.”

Following Norman’s passing in 1973, Dorothy continued to live at the sprawling residence for more than two decades, eventually becoming a recluse there before passing away herself in 1997. It was subsequently sold to Corrigan, an interior designer who set about restoring and modernizing the home, a project that took a year and a half to complete.

Timothy eventually sold the property to Courtney Callahan and her husband, Joseph Handleman, in 2006, at which time it entered its most tumultuous chapter.

The couple soon began their own renovation of the place and things quickly went bad. Jeff Lewis of “Flipping Out” was subsequently hired to oversee the completion of the work, which became the subject of several highly dramatic season two episodes. Of Courtney and Joseph and the fraught-with-tension project, Lewis told the Orange County Register, “It’s a fantastic house, and that was one of my reasons for wanting to take the job. But to be honest with you, I believed them. They’d been under construction for one and a half years, had spent $600,000 to $800,000 (on renovations), and where it went I don’t know. I just kind of bought that story that everyone’s taking advantage of them and everyone’s not doing their jobs, and once I started working for them, I realized, ‘Oh my God, these people aren’t being taken advantage of, they’re the problem!’ We are no longer speaking, so you know the outcome.”

Joseph and Courtney’s woes didn’t end with Lewis. In 2009, the couple filed a lawsuit against previous owner Corrigan claiming that, in what sounds like a plot point straight out of “The Money Pit,” the designer had “used lavish decorations to conceal faulty water pipes, leaky roofs, black mold, raw sewage and dangerous wiring” and that the home was “rotten to the core.”

The arbitration documents concerning the case proved more scintillating than a movie script! The Los Angeles Times describes, “Married, divorced and then remarried, the couple allege they were in the market for a stress-free home. The couple say they told Corrigan that their relationship was too fragile to handle the stress of a ‘fixer-upper.’ Handleman, an heir to a music distribution firm, suffered from a neurological disorder that made him intolerant of disruption and prone to angry outbursts when stressed, according to arbitration documents. Callahan also has displayed a temper. She was once arrested for scratching Handleman with a butcher knife, according to court documents, and was recorded cursing out the host of the reality television program ‘Flipping Out.’”

The drawn-out case was finally settled on July 23, 2012, with an arbitrator ruling against the couple. Two days later, Joseph was dead, killed in an alleged suicide. A cautionary tale of home renovation if ever there was one.

As plagued with problems as the renovation may have been, the extended project was eventually completed and, for the most part, the house was better for it. Many of the estate’s original elements were kept intact, including the handsome wood-paneled formal reception hall with its sweeping curved staircase.

Gold leaf detailing, gilded chandeliers and handsome hardwood flooring still adorn the luxe living spaces where Dorothy and Norman once entertained the city’s glitterati.

The kitchen, though, is another story. Formerly a subtle space with white tile and cabinetry, the room was completed revamped and no longer looks anything like its original self. Thoroughly updated, it now includes heavy wood fixtures, 400-year-old limestone tile flooring, carved cabinets and a formidable central island.

The backyard was also given a facelift and today is dreamland of rolling lawns, manicured gardens, fountains and a pool with dancing water features.

While some of the renovations were questionable, including the overly ostentatious owners’ suite bath (pictured above), the home, which is a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Landmark, is no doubt a gem of a property.

The house hit the market for $11.25 million the same year the lawsuit was settled and floundered for several years until eventually becoming the subject of yet another real estate reality show! In 2016, Josh and Matthew Altman of “Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles” were hired to sell the estate, which was detailed in the season seven episode titled “Reality Bites.” Though it was purported the duo closed a $10.6 million deal on the pad within a matter of days, property records show it actually sold for $9.5 million. Just a few months later, the home hit the market yet again, this time at an insanely ambitious $50 million, but there were no takers (not surprising, considering the massive markup!).

It is not only reality show cameras that have captured the Dorothy Chandler Estate onscreen.

The property most famously portrayed the home of Sarah McNerney (Brittany Murphy) and her wealthy family in the 2003 romantic comedy “Just Married.” The home’s grand music room, where the Chandlers hosted many Academy Award parties in their day, appeared several times in the film. In a bit of location trickery, only the interior of the property was featured onscreen. For the exterior of the McNerney mansion, producers looked to a handsome Paul Revere Williams estate that once stood at 160 S. San Rafael Ave. in Pasadena but sadly burned down in 2005.

The Chandler Estate also appeared as the residence of mobster Billy Walker (William Lucking) in the 2003 comedy “The Rundown.”

Detectives Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) and Colin Hunt (Brett Tucker) crash a party there in order to secure a fingerprint from a murder suspect in the season four episode of “Castle” titled “The Limey.”

Anthony DiNozzo Sr. (Robert Wagner) and Ziva David (Cote de Pablo) go undercover at the mansion in the season eight episode of “NCIS” titled “Broken Arrow,” which has Anthony DiNozzo Jr. (Michael Weatherly), who is observing the ruse via stakeout, proclaiming, “I feel like I’m in a James Bond movie directed by Fellini.”

The 2014 thriller “10 Cent Pistol” is also largely set at the mansion. It is there that Harris Englewood, aka H-Wood (Thomas Ian Nicholas), is held hostage throughout the film.