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Marilyn Monroe’s final home saved from demolition by Los Angeles City Council
The final home of Marilyn Monroe will not be demolished by property owners who sought to tear it down after the Los Angeles City Council voted to designate it as a historic cultural monument on Wednesday.
Last July, real estate heiress Brinah Milstein and her husband, TV producer Roy Bank, purchased the Spanish hacienda-style residence located at 12305 West 5th Helena Drive in Brentwood for $8.35 million. The couple, who owns the property next door, obtained a city permit to demolish the Monroe home, which was initially granted but later revoked.
The couple sued the city of L.A. in May so they could complete the tear-down.
Monroe was found dead of a drug overdose at the home in 1962. It is the first and only residence she owned independently, according to the New York Times.
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During Wednesday’s meeting, Councilwoman Traci Park — who represents L.A.’s 11th District, where the property is located — said allowing the home to be destroyed would be “a devastating blow to historical preservation.”
“We have an opportunity to do something today that should’ve been done 60 years ago,” Park said. “There is no other person or place in the city of Los Angeles as iconic as Marilyn Monroe and her Brentwood home.”
The council was previously scheduled to take up the matter on June 12 but the vote was delayed. Park requested the decision be postponed so ongoing discussions with Milstein and Bank could continue.
The lawsuit filed by the couple on May 6 sought a court order to block the monument designation, alleging they would suffer irreparable harm if they could not demolish the home.
In the court filings, Milstein and Bank accused the city of “illegal and unconstitutional conduct,” describing the Brentwood home as “the house where Marilyn Monroe occasionally lived for a mere six months before she tragically committed suicide 61 years ago.”
On June 6, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James Chalfant sided with the city in a tentative ruling. In it, he said Milstein and Bank had made an “ill-disguised motion to win so that they can demolish the home and eliminate the historic cultural monument issue.” Chalfant said the property owners would not suffer irreparable harm since the council would address the matter.
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Preservationists and supporters have called the residence a beloved piece of Hollywood history. Los Angeles Conservancy, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting historical landmarks, called on concerned citizens to attend Wednesday’s council meeting to advocate for designating it an official historic cultural landmark in L.A.
The group said Monroe’s final home was identified as being potentially historic by the City’s SurveyLA program in 2013, but was “currently unprotected.”
“Hollywood’s iconic ‘blonde bombshell’ Marilyn Monroe left us way too soon, and now her house where she lived — and died in 1962 — may also be lost if we don’t act quickly,” Los Angeles Conservancy said in a description of the house.
Before the council’s vote Wednesday, the residence had been making its way through the process of being designated a monument, with approval granted by the Cultural Heritage Commission and the city council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee.
The lawsuit previously filed by Milstein and Bank alleged the home did not qualify for such a designation.
“All of these backroom machinations were in the name of preserving a house which in no way meets any of the criteria for an `Historic Cultural Monument,” the court filings state. “That much is bolstered by the fact, among others, that for 60 years through 14 owners and numerous remodels and building permits issued by the city, the city has taken no action regarding the now-alleged ‘historic’ or ‘cultural’ status of the house.”
Just months before her death, Monroe told a reporter with Life magazine that she loved how private the home was, refusing to allow the publication’s photographer to take photos, according to Vanity Fair.
“I don’t want everybody to see exactly where I live, what my sofa or my fireplace looks like. Do you know the book Everyman? Well, I want to stay just in the fantasy of Everyman,” she told the magazine.
Bela Karolyi, the charismatic if polarizing gymnastics coach who turned young women into champions and the United States into an international power, has died. He was 82.
A spokesperson for USA Gymnastics confirmed to CBS News by email that Karolyi died Friday. No cause of death was given.
Karolyi and wife Martha trained multiple Olympic gold medalists and world champions in the U.S. and Romania, including Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton.
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“A big impact and influence on my life,” Comaneci, who was just 14 when Karolyi coached her to gold for Romania at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, posted on Instagram.
The Karolyis defected to the United States in 1981 and over the next 30-plus years became a guiding force in American gymnastics, though not without controversy. Bela helped guide Retton — all of 16 — to the Olympic all-around title at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles and memorably helped an injured Kerri Strug off the floor at the 1996 Games in Atlanta after Strug’s vault secured the team gold for the Americans.
Karolyi briefly became the national team coordinator for USA Gymnastics women’s elite program in 1999 and incorporated a semi-centralized system that eventually turned the Americans into the sport’s gold standard. It did not come without a cost. He was pushed out after the 2000 Olympics after several athletes spoke out about his tactics.
It would not be the last time Karolyi was accused of grandstanding and pushing his athletes too far physically and mentally.
During the height of the Larry Nassar scandal in the late 2010s — when the disgraced former USA Gymnastics team doctor was effectively given a life sentence after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting gymnasts and other athletes with his hands under the guise of medical treatment — over a dozen former gymnasts came forward saying the Karolyis were part of a system that created an oppressive culture that allowed Nassar’s behavior to run unchecked for years.
Still, some of Karolyi’s most famous students were always among his staunchest defenders. When Strug got married, she and Karolyi took a photo recreating their famous scene from the 1996 Olympics, when he carried her onto the medals podium after she vaulted on a badly sprained ankle.
Despite losing his boxing match to Jake Paul, Mike Tyson in a social media post Saturday said he had “no regrets” to getting “in ring one last time.”
The boxing legend was defeated by social media star Jake Paul in a highly anticipated fight on Friday night with an age difference of over three decades between the two contenders.
Netflix said Saturday that 60 million households worldwide tuned in to watch the match. The two fighters went eight full rounds, with each round two minutes long. Paul defeated Tyson by unanimous decision and the 27-year-old upset boxer and 58-year-old former heavyweight champion hugged afterward.
Paul was expected to earn about $40 million from the fight, and Tyson was expected to take around $20 million for the fight, according to DraftKings and other online reports.
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Tyson said on his social media that “this is one of those situations when you lost but still won. I’m grateful for last night.”
The fight almost didn’t happen after Tyson experienced an ulcer flare-up while on a plane in March. He addressed his illness Saturday, writing that he “almost died in June.” He said he had eight blood transfusions and “lost half my blood and 25lbs in hospital and had to fight to get healthy to fight so I won.”
Tyson retired from boxing in 2005 after a 20-year career. He last fought in a 2020 exhibition match against former four-division world champ Roy Jones Jr.
“To have my children see me stand toe to toe and finish 8 rounds with a talented fighter half my age in front of a packed Dallas Cowboy stadium is an experience that no man has the right to ask for. Thank you,” he said.
Alex Sundby and
contributed to this report.
In their final meeting, China’s leader Xi Jinping told U.S. President Biden that his nation was “ready to work with a new administration,” as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take over.
The two leaders gathered Saturday on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Mr. Biden was expected to urge Xi to dissuade North Korea from further deepening its support for Russia’s war on Ukraine. It marked their first in-person meeting since they met in Northern California last November.
Without mentioning Trump’s name, Xi appeared to signal his concern that the incoming president’s protectionist rhetoric on the campaign trail could send the U.S.-China relationship into another valley.
“China is ready to work with a new U.S. administration to maintain communication, expand cooperation and manage differences so as to strive for a steady transition of the China-U.S. relationship for the benefit of the two peoples,” Xi said through an interpreter.
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Mr. Biden, meanwhile, spoke in broader brushstrokes about where the relationship has gone and reflected not just on the past four years, but on their long relationship.
“Over the past four years, China-U.S. relations have experienced ups and downs, but with the two of us at the helm, we have also engaged in fruitful dialogues and cooperation, and generally achieved stability,” he said.
Mr. Biden and Xi, with top aides surrounding them, gathered around a long rectangle of tables in an expansive conference room at Lima’s Defines Hotel and Conference Center.
There’s much uncertainty about what lies ahead in the U.S.-China relationship under Trump, who campaigned promising to levy 60% tariffs on Chinese imports.
Bobby Djavaheri, president of Los Angeles-based Yedi Houseware Appliances — which manufactures its products in China — told CBS News in an interview this week that such tariffs “would decimate our business, but not only our business. It would decimate all small businesses that rely on importing.”
Trump has also proposed revoking China’s Most Favored Nation trade status, phasing out all imports of essential goods from China and banning China from buying U.S. farmland.
Already, many American companies, including Nike and eyewear retailer Warby Parker, have been diversifying their sourcing away from China. Shoe brand Steve Madden says it plans to cut imports from China by as much as 45% next year.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden administration officials will advise the Trump team that managing the intense competition with Beijing will likely be the most significant foreign policy challenge they will face.
It’s a big moment for Mr. Biden as he wraps up more than 50 years in politics. He saw his relationship with Xi as among the most consequential on the international stage and put much effort into cultivating that relationship.
Mr. Biden and Xi first got to know each other on travels across the U.S. and China when both were vice presidents, interactions that both have said left a lasting impression.
“For over a decade, you and I have spent many hours together, both here and in China and in between. And I think we’ve spent a long time dealing with these issues,” Mr. Biden said Saturday.
But the last four years have presented a steady stream of difficult moments.
The FBI this week offered new details of a federal investigation into Chinese government efforts to hack into U.S. telecommunications networks. The initial findings have revealed a “broad and significant” cyberespionage campaign aimed at stealing information from Americans who work in government and politics.
U.S. intelligence officials also have assessed China has surged sales to Russia of machine tools, microelectronics and other technology that Moscow is using to produce missiles, tanks, aircraft and other weaponry for use in its war against Ukraine.
And tensions flared last year after Mr. Biden ordered the shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon that traversed the United States.
