History[edit]

Michèle Morgan, French actress for RKO Radio Pictures, arranged for architect Robert Byrd to design a home and J.F. Wadkins to build the luxury home resembling an early 19th-century European style farmhouse. The house was completed in 1944, with an address of 10050 Cielo Drive. It was on a 3.3-acre level lot above Benedict Canyon in Beverly Hills. The home included a 3,200 square foot main residence and 2,000 square foot guest cottage. According to the Los Angeles Times, Morgan paid $32,000. By the end of World War II, Morgan had returned to France. The house was later sold to Dr. Hartley Dewey and his wife Louise who rented it to Lillian Gish in 1946,^[2] while she was filming Duel in the Sun.^[3]

Rudolph Altobelli (1929–2011), a music and film industry talent manager, bought the house for $86,000 in the early 1960s (equivalent to US$740,000 in 2019) and often rented it out.^[4]Residents included Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon (it was their honeymoon nest in 1965^[5]), Henry Fonda, George Chakiris, Mark Lindsay, Paul Revere & the Raiders, Samantha Eggar, and Olivia Hussey. Charles Manson visited the house in late 1968, when it was occupied (from May 1966 to January 1969) by couple Terry Melcher (the son of actress Doris Day) andCandice Bergen with roommate/talent-manager Roger Hart.^[6] The couple split in early 1969, with Melcher relocating to Malibu.

In February 1969, Roman Polanski and his wife Sharon Tate began renting the home from Altobelli. On August 8/9, 1969, the home became the scene of the murders of Tate, Wojciech Frykowski, Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring, and Steven Parent at the hands of the Manson "Family".^[7] William Garretson, Altobelli's caretaker and an acquaintance of Parent, lived in the guest house behind the main house and was unaware of the murders until the next morning, when he was taken into custody by police officers who had arrived at the scene. He was later cleared of all charges.^[8]

Altobelli moved into the house just three weeks after the murders and resided there until 1988. During an interview on ABC's show 20/20, he said that while living there, he felt "safe, secure, loved and beauty."^[4][9] The house was then sold to John Prell, a real estate investor.^[10] The purchase price was $1.6 million in 1989 (equivalent to $3.3 million in 2019).^[4] In 1992, Prell sold the property to Alvin Weintraub, another real estate investor.^[11]

Nine Inch Nails[edit]

The final resident of the original house was the musician Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails.