Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift are reportedly staying in Swift’s Beverly Hills mansion, an estate formerly owned by Hollywood movie mogul Samuel L. Goldwyn Sr. YouTube screengrab/Hollywood Lifestyle
y now Travis Kelce knows he can’t go out in public without paparazzi nearby. That’s how the world knows where he and girlfriend Taylor Swift have been holed up the last few days.
Paparazzi have caught him arriving at a Beverly Hills estate owned by Swift, who collects real estate across the country. She’s on a break from her worldwide “Eras Tour” until May. Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs just ended their season by winning the Super Bowl last month.
The mansion was built in 1934 by the late movie producer Samuel L. Goldwyn Sr. Swift bought it for a reported $25 million in 2015, and ABC News declared her the “proud owner of a piece of movie history.”
If only those walls could talk. What Hollywood tales would they tell?
Goldwyn is the “G” in MGM — Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer — famous for its roaring lion mascot.
Are Swift and Kelce sharing meals in the dining room where Hollywood legends Clark Gable and Charlie Chaplin once dined?
Goldwyn produced several classic films, including “Guys and Dolls” with Marlon Brando, “Pride of the Yankees” with Gary Cooper, “The Bishop’s Wife” with Cary Grant and David Niven, and “The Little Foxes” with Bette Davis.
Trivia: His house served as the set for some of those movies, including the melancholy British love story “Wuthering Heights” starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon.
The estate, which had been listed for $39 million, includes an 11,000-square-foot main house with seven bedrooms, 10 bathrooms and a two-bedroom guest apartment above the garage, according to real estate listings when Swift bought the house.
It has a swimming pool and tennis court — aren’t those required in Beverly Hills? — a pool house and cabana, staff lodgings and terraces on two acres reportedly located behind the famous Beverly Hills Hotel.
A sweeping staircase in the foyer greets visitors with old Hollywood charm.
The home was never owned by anyone outside the Goldwyn family until Swift bought it. After getting a deal on the place, she dove into renovations, applying for and winning landmark status for the estate.
The vote by the Beverly Hills City Council to award that status was unanimous, Mansion Global real estate website reported in 2017.
“I think this is a true community gem and really so thrilled that this will be landmarked and preserved,” Beverly Hills Mayor Lili Bosse said at the time.
Mansion Global reported that Swift bought the estate from the Goldwyn family through a company “linked to her managers in Nashville” and spent “an undisclosed amount hiring architects to survey and restore the property to its original condition.”
A 2016 assessment she commissioned from architects Barbara Lamprecht and George Taylor Louden said renowned architect Douglas Honnold designed the Georgian Revival house for Goldwyn and his wife, Frances.
But what a time to build a grand mansion — in the middle of the Great Depression.
To save money, Goldwyn used set designers from various MGM movies to help build the house, the architects found, according to Mansion Global.
The report also found that parts of the estate were virtually untouched since 1934, including the sunken tennis court and pool. Swift launched into a detail-oriented rehabilitation that preserved everything from the original plaster molding on that staircase to the wisteria vines climbing the front facade.
According to HGTV Canada, the Goldwyns threw memorable dinner parties in their dining room for many Hollywood legends, including Marlene Dietrich and “It’s a Wonderful Life” director Frank Capra. It’s said the dining room table was big enough to seat 20.
When the pop star bought the house, Architectural Digest noted her vast real estate holdings that at the time included a $2 million duplex penthouse and a $2.5 million Greek Revival, both in Nashville, a $17.75 million Rhode Island estate right on the ocean and a penthouse in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood.
Kelce did some house-hunting himself last year, moving out of his home in Kansas City’s Northland because it was not secure enough once he started dating Swift and paparazzi came to town.
Jason Kelce told Shaquille O’Neal that his brother “had to move … completely out of his house,” because of the attention, a drawback of fame.
“People just standing by his house,” Kelce said on O’Neal’s show, “The Big Podcast.” “Yeah, I mean safety reasons. And the first day he moved into the new house, a gated community, somebody knocks on a window of the house.”
Kelce moved into a 17,000-square-foot mansion behind gates in Leawood’s upscale Tomahawk Creek Estates, described when it went up for sale as a “once in a lifetime” place to live.
The couple are keeping a low-profile in Los Angeles, though they were spotted over the weekend on a dinner date. Swift doesn’t return to touring until May, but has a new album coming out April 19, “The Tortured Poets Department.”
Meanwhile, some people think Kelce is competing on “The Masked Singer” as the Lovebird.
