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Community Corner

Vanderlips Set the Mold in Palos Verdes

Elin Vanderlip's enduring legacy enriches Rancho Palos Verdes.

Editor's Note: This is the last installment in a three-part series about the Vanderlip Estate and the family's sizable impact on Rancho Palos Verdes. The and parts are published on the site.

Kelvin and Elin Vanderlip sold seven acres of their property to actors Charles Laughton and his wife, Elsa Lancaster. In the mornings, Elin wrote in her 2008 memoir, “Eccentric, Obstinate and Fabulous!" she would watch Laughton as he “hung in trees in his pajamas, pruning citrus, almond and sapote branches … a bottle of champagne in one hand and pruning shears in the other.” 

Happy evening were spent in the living room at Villa Narcissa, the Vanderlips’ estate in Portuguese Bend, listening to Laughton’s “glorious voice” as he read from Shaw, Dickens, Shakespeare and the Bible.

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Aside from their extensive entertaining of film stars, artists and politicians, the Vanderlips were deeply involved in the community. While Kelvin headed up the Chadwick School Board, oversaw plans for the , built a four-room schoolhouse (now ) and — as president of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce — lobbied hard for Marineland, Elin had projects of her own.

One was to enlarge Villa Narcissa. In 1950, along with adding bedrooms and bathrooms, “we enclosed the outside staircase creating a lofty entrance hall,” she wrote in her book. The hall had a view of the Italian cypresses lining 260 steps leading to a white column temple: “Later, I had a Paris muralist paint four cypress [pathways] on the walls, matching the real one outside.”

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One endeavor close to Elin’s heart was a soccer field for Norwegian merchant seamen left idle on long layovers in the Port of Los Angeles. 

In 1947, Consul General Kaare Ingstad, a frequent guest at the Vanderlips, and a pastor from the Norwegian Seamen’s Church, told the young Mrs. Vanderlip they wanted to provide outdoor recreation for sailors who had nowhere to go but bars and brothels. 

Eight and a half acres of land in Rolling Hills Estates was made available for Nansen Field, a project Elin supported for the rest of her life. Her husband, she wrote, was deeply proud of her “pure” Norwegian heritage.

Two beautiful babies for one

The children came along, Kelvin Cox, Jr. in 1948, Narcissa in 1950, and the twins, Katrina and Henrik in 1952. When, during Elin’s third pregnancy, one of the twin’s heart beat could not be found, she thought she had lost the baby. But that turned out not to be a false alarm.

“It has only taken me fifty years to begin to grasp the glory and the wonder of getting two beautiful babies for one,” she wrote.

Problems in paradise began with Kelvin’s older brother, Frank A. Vanderlip Jr. His mother’s favorite, Frank had been sent to Harvard with a valet, polo ponies and fabulous cars. Kelvin, who insisted on going to Princeton to escape his brother’s shadow, was given $50 a month for everything. Elin thought it shaped her husband’s character. 

Frank was an entirely different matter. To Elin, Kelvin's brother “had infinite charm and generosity, but we never got along.” She was doubly shocked when Frank Jr. was named president of the Palos Verdes Corporation over his brother, who was demoted to vice president. It was done by the matriarch, Narcissa Vanderlip, the boys' mother, who acted against everyone else in the family. 

When Elin threatened to move to Norway and take the children with her, Kelvin resigned.

Frank moved into the Old Cottage, the original residence built by Frank A. Vanderlip Sr. in 1914. He brought with him his butler, Cavanaugh, who took to sunbathing in a black bikini. (Though he married twice, Frank Jr., according to Elin’s book, was bisexual and later died childless from complications from Alzheimer’s.) 

But when he took over the Palos Verdes Corporation in the early 1950s, Frank Jr. halted much of the work Kelvin had been doing to develop the Peninsula.

“He bought advice that to do as little as possible [with all this land] was to be the policy,” Elin wrote.

It broke Kelvin’s heart.

Suffering from urological problems all his life, Kelvin became seriously ill in 1955.  That same year, doctors discovered three tumors on his lung. Months of cobalt treatments followed. 

Things went from bad to worse when Narcissa, the Vanderlips’ older daughter, came down with Meningitis. Although Narcissa got better, Kelvin did not. He died on Aug. 15, 1956, exactly ten years after the couple fell in love in the moonlight on the Eventide. 

Still wracked with grief two years later, Elin decided to rent her home and move to Europe for a time saying in her book, “You do not cry all day if you are skiing.”

Murderous nuns

Before she sailed in 1958, the Marymount group bought land on Palos Verdes Drive East and wanted to lease Villa Narcissa for a dormitory for two nuns and 12 girls.  Delighted, Elin found she needed a variance. She also needed patience.

Her neighbors were enraged, believing “they had to protect the community from the murderous nuns who would drive over all the small children in the neighborhood.” There were hearings, the variance denied. Never one to take no for an answer, Elin got an important Catholic friend to intercede. The nuns moved in.

For the next eight years, Elin and her children spent winters skiing in Switzerland, summers in Norway, Spain and Paris. Her passion for art and the restoration of imperiled objects d'art in French chateaux, museums and churches eventually led to her founding of Friends of French Art in 1979. 

The woman who spoke seven languages and never went to college, was awarded two of France’s highest cultural honors, the Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur, and Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters.

By 1966, her eldest son accepted at Pomona College, Elin returned to Portuguese Bend. Her three younger children were sent to Palos Verdes High School. 

“I had been impressed with its computers, swimming pool and the school’s luxuriant site on the coast,” Elin wrote.

That impression changed when Henrik was socked in the face at a school dance. Elin also didn't approve that PV High students “kissed on the mouth.” A free-thinker when it came to her own love life, she believed “going steady” was wrong for teenagers. She yanked her children out of PV High and sent them east to school.

The wicked witch

Such actions, as well as her refusal to join a Portuguese Bend group lobbying to remove the gate blocking Narcissa Road from public access, resulted in the nickname she took some pride in. 

“I am the well known as the ‘Wicked Witch’ in the ‘Haunted Castle’, and I have been the target of every brave high-schooler who wanted to break my gate and climb my fences,” she wrote.

But the woman, who danced the Norwegian flokke with the 70 or so guests at her 90th birthday party a month before she died and fought for the loan to ensure the opening of (site of a Vanderlip Sitting Room), will be remembered for much more. 

Though scattered with their families and various businesses around the globe — from London to Moscow to Connecticut to Los Angeles — Kelvin Cox Vanderlip Jr., Henrik Nils Vanderlip Sr., Katrina Vanderlip and Narcissa Vanderlip-Fuller spend time when they can at Villa Narcissa, where their mother’s ashes rest beneath the blue Jacaranda trees.

At the conclusion of her book, Elin wrote: “Today the boys are successful businessmen, and the girls multi-talented. They graduated from Princeton, Cornell, and Harvard. One has taken eight teenagers to cruise Turkish waters, has been up Machu Picchu, sent me gifts from Bombay. I have every reason to be proud as they are handsome, amusing, athletic; skiers, sailors, and wanderers.”

Right out of the Elin Vanderlip mold.

A subsequent story will focus on the Portuguese Bend Riding Club, once Frank A. Vanderlip’s dairy.

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