Arthur Dea Elrod, Jr. (August 8, 1924 – February 18, 1974) was an American interior designer, perhaps best known for the

Elrod House The Elrod House is a residence in Palm Springs, California designed by American architect John Lautner and constructed in 1968. It is located on the edge of a hill at 2175 Southridge Drive in Palm Springs, California. The construction of the house ...

in Palm Springs, California designed by the architect

John Lautner John Edward Lautner (16 July 1911 – 24 October 1994) was an American architect. Following an apprenticeship in the mid-1930s with the Taliesin Fellowship led by Frank Lloyd Wright, Lautner opened his own practice in 1938, where he worked for th ...

and built for Elrod in 1968.

Early life

Elrod was born in Anderson, South Carolina, grew up on a farm, and studied design at South Carolina's Clemson University, before attending the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles.

Career

In 1954, Elrod and Harold "Hal" Broderick started Arthur Elrod and Associates, an interior design firm on Palm Canyon Drive in Palm Springs, and went on to hire William C. Raiser,

Steve Chase Steve Chase was the director of the Advocacy for Social Justice and Sustainability program in the department of Environmental Studies at Antioch University New England. He is an activist, organizer, Quaker, lecturer, and editor. Biography Steve Cha ...

, and others.

Personal life

In 1968, architect

built a home for Elrod in Palm Springs, California that became known as the

. The parties he held at the

were "legendary",

Bill Blass William Ralph Blass (June 22, 1922 – June 12, 2002) was an American fashion designer. He was the recipient of many fashion awards, including seven Coty Awards and the Fashion Institute of Technology's Lifetime Achievement Award (1999). Early ...

held a fashion show, ''

Playboy ''Playboy'' is an American men's lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. K ...

'' did a November 1971 feature, ''Pleasure on the Rocks'', and the house was used as Willard Whyte's mansion in the 1971

James Bond The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...

film, '' Diamonds Are Forever''. The house has been described as the "ultimate bachelor pad", and it has been noted that increasing numbers of the "pads" in ''Playboy'' in the 1970s belonged to out gay men like Elrod. Elrod was a close friend of

Bob Hope Leslie Townes "Bob" Hope (May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003) was a British-American comedian, vaudevillian, actor, singer and dancer. With a career that spanned nearly 80 years, Hope appeared in more than 70 short and feature films, with 5 ...

and his wife Dolores. Elrod and his associate, William Raiser, died in a traffic accident on February 18, 1974, when their Fiat sportscar was hit by a drunk teenage driver. Elrod was 49 years old.

References

"Arthur Elrod: Desert Modern Design" by Adele Cygelman (Gibbs Smith, 2019)

External links

Civic Center: Arthur Elrod 1: 350 Via Lola

{{DEFAULTSORT:Elrod, Arthur 1924 births 1974 deaths American interior designers People from Atlanta American gay artists LGBT designers Chouinard Art Institute alumni Clemson University alumni People from Palm Springs, California Road incident deaths in California 20th-century American LGBT people