Bob Hope Archives - Toluca Lake Magazine

Every October, cobwebs, giant spiders, tombstones and ghosts start popping up in Toluca Lake’s well-tended yards, turning them into classic graveyards and evil gardens! We love how this neighborhood goes all out in decorating for the holidays, and Halloween 2017 brought out the community’s creative best. Check out our slideshow to see for yourself!

Sotheby’s first annual Toluca Lake Halloween House-Decorating Contest added to the fun. Congratulations to Ruth Ann and George Jones, whose Scary Tales house received the most votes.

The homes pictured here are just some of the many that build on a longstanding tradition of elaborate Halloween decorating in the community, which is why the neighborhood tops best trick-or-treating lists year after year. With so many residents either working in or connected to the entertainment industry, it’s no wonder that each home feels like a grand production, complete with lights, horror soundtracks and, sometimes, costumed actors to scare passersby.

And while the tricks are plentiful, so are the treats. In the past, Bob and Dolores Hope had a reputation for handing out full-size candy bars, nose-shaped noisemakers and Frisbees. Many continue the Hopes’ tradition, handing out plenty of candy and creative loot to those brave enough to traverse the ghostly pathways leading up to their doorsteps.

The Say Scream house builds on this generous custom by adding a social media element. For the second year in a row, the Gallopo family took free professional photos of attendees in costume and shared them in an online gallery and Instagram feed. “I love Halloween in Toluca Lake!” says Todd Gallopo. “The way this neighborhood warmly welcomes and spooks thousands of trick-or-treaters has always brought out the kid in me.”

Always a home to creative geniuses, Toluca Lake holds a notable spot in holiday-music history: One of the most popular seasonal tunes of all time, “The Christmas Song” by Mel Tormé and Robert Wells, was written here.

In his memoir It Wasn’t All Velvet, Tormé described that day in 1945: “One excessively hot afternoon, I drove out to Bob’s house in Toluca Lake for a work session. The San Fernando Valley, always at least 10 degrees warmer than the rest of the town, blistered in the July sun.” Tormé noticed four lines of verse, beginning with “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,” jotted on a notepad next to Wells’ piano. When Tormé asked about it, Wells replied, “It was so damn hot today, I thought I’d write something to cool myself off. All I could think of was Christmas and cold weather.” Tormé saw the potential for a song, and as he recalled, “We sat down together at the piano, and, improbable though it may sound, ‘The Christmas Song’ was completed about 45 minutes later.” Nat King Cole recorded the song in 1946, making it an enduring holiday standard.

Another musical holiday staple from the 1940s with a very similar L.A. origin story (the often-omitted opening verse describes seeing sunshine and palm trees while “longing to be up north”) is Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas.” While that song references Beverly Hills, there is, of course, a Toluca Lake connection: The singer who made it a hit and became inextricably linked to it was Bing Crosby, one of the neighborhood’s best-known residents. But the local ties don’t stop there. When “White Christmas” became the basis for a movie of the same name in 1954, the composer who wrote the score for that now-classic holiday film (as well as the iconic Road movies starring Crosby and another famous Tolucan, Bob Hope) was Joseph J. Lilley — who that same year bought a house in Toluca Lake on Moorpark Street, where he resided until his death in 1971.

House Boo-tiful

Toluca Lake’s Tuneful Holiday Legacy

Bob Hope

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