My wife was just reading aloud from an article in the L.A. Times about the Bert Lahr Estate going for a cool $28.5 million. Beside the fact that I can’t figure out how an old vaudevillian could afford to have an estate in 1941 (he couldn’t have made that much money off of Wizard of Oz in those days, could he?), the place was also owned by Betty Grable and Harry James. I don’t know how long the two lived there, but I was dying to see what kind of life a jazz trumpeter could have during the swing era. In fact, even though his wife was a screen idol, he might have raked in more dough…those swing stars made money by the truck load back then.

So I took thirty seconds and found the address, and it’s worth taking a look on Google maps satellite view. The pad (hey, it may be enormous but it’s still a jazz player’s pad) has probably been expanded somewhat since then, maybe not all the outbuildings were there in the 1940’s. Still…there isn’t a trumpet player alive today that makes that kind of money. Not Wynton. Not Chuck Mangione. Not even Chris Botti. It’s not even imaginable.

Harry James and Betty Grable, 1943.

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