Perched high atop THE BEVERLY HILLS MOUNTAINS lies LAUTNER’ S SHEATS / GOLDSTEIN RESIDENCE, ONE of the most infamous houses in the world, OWNED by one of the most enigmatic men in the world. JAMES GOLDSTEIN— FASHION pLATE, ARCHITECTURE connoisseur, BASKETBALL JUNKIE, MODEL MAGNET— HAS SpENT FORTY YEARS pERFECTING HIS HOUSE TO THE pERFECT pOINT OF pAST MEETS FUTURE— AND NOW IS IN the middle of pERHApS HIS MOST AMBITIOUS pROJECT yet. TREATS! DROpS BY HIS MODERNIST EDEN TO TALK concrete and glass, COBRA SKIN HATS, JET-SETTING IN style, AND WHY A MAN IN HIS SEVENTIES IS BUILDING A world class nightclub and a movie theatre repLETE with a rooftop TENNIS COURT NExT TO HIS HISTORIC gem of a home by Joe Donnelly portrait by Steve Shaw
In a glass-framed photo on a glass desk in a glass and concrete house high on a hill, is pictured a fit young man with shoulderlength, shaggy hair. The man is resplendently dressed in a white, high-collared long-sleeve shirt, crisp, white slacks and black dress boots— a dandy in waiting, it would seem. The man in the photograph is years— maybe decades— away from his unlikely notoriety, but he already looks famous, like the DNA of a young Paul Simon and Doors-era Val Kilmer somehow collided. In his hand is a leash attached to an equally turned out Afghan hound. The dog is important, once the love of his life, the man has said. And it was for that dog that this whole thing started.
Another photo catches the eye. The man is naked and bears a resemblance to a young, sun-bronzed Iggy Pop had Iggy decided he didn’ t like to sweat. In the picture he is flanked by two topless young women straight out of a California dream of sunshine and free love. Their knees meet above his groin and they smile like the fetching muses they once no doubt were. He stares hungrily at the camera, as if this was serious business.
Maybe it was. There have always been fumes of rumors of flings with starlets and dalliances with lonely aristocratic women and mysterious heiresses but Goldstein will only let the pictures do the talking.“ That’ s me and Jayne Mansfield at the opening of the Whisky A-Go-Go in 1964,” he says casually.( One such rumor has Mansfield’ s husband at the time sending a few goons to break young Jimmy’ s legs.) You see, even though James Goldstein is a self-proclaimed“ man-about-the-world,” traveling over 300 days of the year— to fashion shows, basketball games, exotic hotels in equally exotic lands— and has hosted some of the more legendary Hollywood parties at his house, no one really knows much about the man. And, it seems, he’ s found the perfect persona: to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. There are plenty more photos on display like trophies. Here he is with Spike Lee, Penelope Cruz, Sean Combs, Snoop Dogg, Rihanna, Gisele, Cindy Crawford, Jean Paul Gaultier, Kate Moss, John Galliano …. In these, he doesn’ t look like he did in the earlier photos. Eyebrow-raising haute couture, often crafted
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