The
totally untrue story of Marilyn Monroe’s Maui House
My
husband and I were riding in van, returning from a downhill bike tour of
Haleakala Volcano. The tour company, Mountain Riders, picked up seven of us
tourists from hotels in Ka’anapali in Western Maui at 2:30 AM and drove us to
the 10,000+ foot summit of Haleakala volcano to watch the sunrise. That was 10
hours ago. After the sunrise, we coasted down the mountain on bicycles to the
town of Pa’ia some 23 miles away where we had lunch. However, this activity is
not the focus of this blog. That’s because I was more intrigued by a story our
van driver Duane recounted on the return drive. The van had just dropped off
the bike trailer at the Mountain Riders office in Kahului and was now returning
us to our hotels, about a 35 minute drive. As we headed out of town on Highway
30, we passed a building so large it could easily be seen from the side of the
mountain to the highway a few miles away.
“You see
that house up on the hill?” asked Duane as he pointed in its direction. “That
was supposed to be Marilyn Monroe’s house.” Even the three women chatting in
the back of the van perked up at that statement. With the hook baited, Duane
continued his story and it went something like this:
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As I sat
in the van listening to this story, I thought how sad. I only knew the bare
minimum about Marilyn Monroe, sex symbol, film star, multiple marriages, and
tragic death by drug overdose. Monroe seemed to have a lot of demons and to
hear she wanted to get away to a beautiful island paradise and retire would
have been a happier end to her life. Brigitte Bardot is still alive today, age
79, and is a renowned animal welfare activist. What would Monroe be doing
today?
This
story so intrigued me that every time we drove by the house on Waikapu as we
traveled around Maui, I would take photos. Mostly I wondered how different
history and Maui would be if Monroe had succeeded in retiring to Maui. How would
Maui with change with Monroe in residence and how would Monroe change after
living on Maui?
A few
weeks after returning home, I wanted to learn more about Monroe’s Maui house. I
logged onto my computer and began a Bing search for “Marilyn Monroe Maui house”
just to see what would come up. Sure enough, a few titles popped up, including
a website for the golf course, called King Kamehameha Golf Club. I was on the
right track. Frank Lloyd Wright’s name also appeared in some of the links,
something Duane didn’t mention, along with photos of the building. I clicked on
an architecture blog called “The Well Designed Life” by Ginger Brewton and
learned that everything that Duane had told us in the van was completely wrong.
Well, almost completely wrong. He was correct that a Japanese business man owns
the property today, but that’s about it. So here, as paraphrased from the King
Kamehameha Golf Course website and several other places, is the true story of
the house on the hill in Maui.
In 1949
a wealthy Texas couple commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design a house. His
plans were quite extensive and called for 8,000 square feet, but for some
reason, the couple never had it built. Wright filed the plans away. Then in
1952 the Mexican consulate to the US and his wife commissioned Wright to build
them a home in Acapulco Bay. After a visit to the site, Wright pulled his Texas
design and added to it increasing the building’s size to 10,000 sq. ft.
However, the consulate’s son died suddenly and the building was scrapped.
Wright put the plans away. Then in 1957 Marilyn Monroe and her third husband
Arthur Miller called on Wright to design a cozy hideaway for the couple in a
beautifully natural hillside setting. That setting…Roxbury, Connecticut, about
as far from Maui as one could possibly get. The couple also had a few requests
for the new home, a movie theater, a swimming pool and a nursery. Wright showed
Monroe the plans he already had and she agreed to use them. The size of the
house then grew to a whopping 14,000 sq. ft. In 1958 Monroe and Miller divorced
and canceled the construction and Wright passed away about a year later. His
plans were put away at his design firm, Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona. The
home was NEVER built, on Maui or anywhere else.
Jump
ahead to 1988 when Hawaiian business investor Howard Hamamoto and his partners
were touring Taliesin West in hopes of finding plans for a golf course
clubhouse. There were few clubhouse plans in the Wright archives, but he was
shown the plans for the “Marilyn House” and between the plans and Monroe’s
attachment to them, he was hooked. The plans were expanded to 74,000 sq. ft,
however, most of the new space was put below ground, while Wright’s original
plans were used for what people see above ground. It opened in 1993. The group
sold the course a few short years later.
This
private members-only golf course was used mostly by rich Japanese men and when the
Japanese economy tanked in 1999, the course was closed down and abandoned. Then
Tokyo investor and part-time Maui resident Makoto Kaneko bought the property in
2004 for only $12.5 million. He and his investors poured another $40 million in
renovations including design elements that emphasized Maui’s history and
reopened the course in 2006.They also made an effort to include Maui’s
residents to be a part of the course with a museum and other events as well as
a men’s and women’s day spa that anyone can use. Today the clubhouse is an
excellent example of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work. Many Wright devotees come to
tour the building and a portrait of Wright hangs in the clubhouse, The property,
which hosts many weddings, is also known
for stunning views Haleakala volcano to the east and both Ma’alaea Bay to the
south and Kahului Bay to north as it sits on the isthmus between Maui’s ancient
volcanoes.
So this interesting,
yet minor story in the lives of both Marilyn Monroe and Frank Lloyd Wright have
been brought to my attention because of an incorrect tale told by a bike tour
guide. What should I make of Duane? It’s an interesting question because he
also told us a house high on a hilltop near Lahaina belonged to Tom Cruise. I
attempted to look that up online as well. I found out Mr. Cruise is an investor
in a resort property on the neighboring island of Lanai, but could not find
anything about a house in Maui. However, I don’t think Duane was intentionally
lying. I sure he believed what he was saying. Or maybe he was telling us what
we wanted to hear.
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