chauffeured about in China. These surplus jeeps were first offered to civilians for purchase only after the war, in late 1945 or 1946. But the jeep was only part of Dad's lingering romanticized attachment to the military.
In 1946, Father posed for several formal photographs taken by his close friend the celebrated surrealist artist and photographer Man Ray. In these photographs, Dad chose to wear his UNRRA overcoat, complete with epaulets, which gave him the bearing of a military officer. I have reason to believe that during and after the war years — perhaps up through 1949 — George Hodel assumed the persona of an Air Force lieutenant in his romantic overtures to the many women he pursued. It is also likely that his camouflaged identity was either unnown to these women or that there was a mutual agreement that this was a cover story to conceal his real identity because of his marital status.
Dad had become fascinated with Asia, and during his tour of duty in China had bought a large number of rare art objects, available at what amounted to liquidation prices in Shanghai if one had American cash. He invested heavily in Asian antique artworks: rare paintings, antique silk tapestries, and bronze statutes of Chinese deities.
Shortly before he left for Asia, Father had made another investment: in 1945 he bought the Lloyd Wright Sowden House on Franklin Avenue, to which, while he was overseas, he had all of his purchases in Asia shipped. Upon his return from China, Dad also tried to reconcile with Mother, and the four of us moved into the Franklin House on his return in '46. Although my brothers and I believed we had become a family again, we were actually only there as Dad's guests, unaware of our parents' divorce and of our probationary status.
Our old home remains today on the Los Angeles historic registrar, as one of Hollywood's most unusual architectural landmarks. We simply called it 'the Franklin House' because of its Franklin Avenue address, but it is officially known as 'the Sowden House.'
Named for the man who commissioned it, the Sowden House is an architectural wonder designed and built by Lloyd Wright,* who was living in the shadow of his famous father, Frank Lloyd Wright. With its brooding stone archways, long corridors, wide central courtyard and pool, and hidden rooms, it is like a Hollywood set out of a 1930s five-reeler: foreign and exotic. Cars driving by would stop and stare at it in astonishment. Passersby could not believe they were looking at what was a recreation of a 3,000-year-old Mayan temple built of giant concrete blocks. It had no visible windows. It was a high-walled fortress, private and impenetrable, right in the center of Hollywood's residential district, only fifteen minutes from Father's downtown medical clinic.
From the busy Franklin Avenue street frontage, heavy stone steps led steeply up to our house's entrance, which was guarded by an imposing iron gate decorated with iron flowers. Once through the gate you turned immediately to your right and continued up a dark passageway, then made another right turn to the front door. It was like entering a cave with secret stone tunnels, within which only the initiated could feel comfortable. All others proceeded with great caution, not knowing which way to turn. Growing up in that house, my brothers and I saw it as a place of magic that we were convinced could easily have greeted the uninvited with pits of fire, poison darts, deadly snakes, or even a giant sword-bearing turbaned bodyguard at the door. Right out of
Once inside the temple, there was a blaze of light that came at you from all directions, because all the rooms opened onto a central open-air courtyard. The massive stone blocks were laid out in a giant rectangular shape from the front of the street to the alley at the back. There existed no yard exterior to the home, only the open interior atrium surrounded by the four corridors of the house. The highceilinged foyer greeted you at first entrance. Beyond and to the west was the living room, with its ornate fireplace and floor-to-ceiling bookcases that concealed a secret room, accessible only to those who knew how to open the hidden door. The west wing contained the dining room, kitchen, maid's quarters, and guest rooms.
The east wing held the master bedroom and master bath, along with four more bedrooms laid out one after the other, until finally at the north wing there was a huge room, which Sowden had constructed as an entertainment hall or large stage for performances. From any room one could step into a central courtyard full of exotic foliage and beautiful giant cactus plants reaching straight into the sky. Once inside this remarkable house one found oneself in absolute privacy, invisible to the outside world.
This was a storybook time for me and my brothers, who played the Three Musketeers in service to our father, who played the king. Our father was dashing and confident. At six foot one, with his dark hair, trim mustache, immaculate dress, and the formal bearing befitting a highly respected physician, he cut an exceptionally handsome figure. It seemed as if he walked with the imperial air of an aristocrat, the type of man one might meet only once but would never forget. There was a charisma and a power to his presence that commanded attention. When he spoke, his voice had a resonance and power of authority that confirmed that one was in the presence of a man of destiny. His bearing and demeanor conveyed his ability and confidence to accomplish anything. If he was the king, we, his children, were the court.
I was four when we moved into the Franklin House, and we lived there until I was nine. My memories of that time are only fragmentary, and it was only through my rediscovery of my father later on that I was able to verily some of the truths behind those memories. But, like shadows, these shards of memory have followed me through life, and only now am I beginning to understand their import.
I remember how much I loved Father's Army jeep, a real World War II surplus model with an engine that growled and gears that clashed. I loved sitting in the front seat when he drove it out from the rear alleyway, across the vacant dirt lot that abutted our property, then over the curb into the busy intersection of Normandie and Franklin. Kelvin and I would take turns riding with Father in the jeep as he made his house calls. Sitting in the front of the open vehicle, I would look over as Dad navigated through the Hollywood traffic, his wondrous big black medical bag on the seat between us. On several occasions when the opportunity permitted, I looked inside this bag without Dad's knowledge. At that young age, I didn't recognize the objects, nor could I pronounce the names of the things there, and only later, as a Navy corpsman, would I learn what they were, but my child's mind knew they were Father's tools and were important. Cold to the touch and mysterious to the eye, his instruments fascinated me. There were his stethoscope, a tightly wound roll of ace bandage, a hemostat, the strange-looking sphygmomanometer, and a tourniquet. There were also labeled vials with names I couldn't understand, such as penicillin, Benadryl, and morphine. But mostly, I recall how I loved the smells that came from inside that bag, the smells of all things medicinal: clean, sharp, antiseptic.
I remember sitting in the jeep outside private homes while Father attended to his patients. After an hour, or maybe two, he would walk outside with a woman, whom I guessed had been his patient, seeing him off. It seemed
