DISASTROUS FIRE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 26 November 1938, Page 9

DISASTROUS FIRE

HUNDREDS OF HOMES DESTROYED ESTATES OF HOLLYWOOD ARTISTS THREATENED DAMAGE ESTIMATED AT 5,000,000 DOLLARS U I* A. —Bv Electric Telegraph— Copyright! LOS ANGELES, 24th November. An army of fire-lighters have ringed a 200-mile mountain area in an effort to check the series of raging fires which have already destroyed hundreds of homes and threaten many palatial estates owned by cinema artists in this district. The damage done to property up to now is more than 5,000,000 dollars and the damage to a valuable watershed is incalculable. One group of fire-fighters is making a stand in Santa Monica mountains to protect the famous Belair estates fringing Beverly Hills, in which live the cinema artists Shirley Temple, Lionel Barrymore, Jeanette Macdonald, W. C. Fields, Mary Astor and Joan Crawford, none of whose homes is considered to be in immediate danger. Shirley Temple and her parents are absent from home, to which studio guards have been sent to move out the furniture if the danger increases. The hemes of Madeleine Carroll, Frank Lloyd, and the producer Sam Woods have been destroyed. The flames were checked almost at the doors of the homes of Virginia Bruce, Miriam Hopkins and Richard Dix.