The “Scarface” Killing Mansion

The “Scarface” Killing Mansion

The "Scarface" Killing Mansion

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In the 1950s and early 60s, Miami Beach was the most popular vacation destination in the United States. A glamorous town of upscale oceanfront hotels such as the Fontainebleau, Eden Roc and Deauville (where the Beatles made their first American performance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964) and nightclubs where the biggest celebrities including Frank Sinatra and Jackie Gleason partied and performed. Gambling was tolerated, A-list strippers kept the conventioneers happy and the five New York crime families declared it to be "open territory" where anything was tolerated.

By the late 1970s, Miami was a wasteland of drugs and murder. So many people were robbed and killed that travelers were advised to avoid South Florida. In 1980, the city had 573 murders. Things were so bad, the county morgue couldn't handle the workload and rented a refrigerated truck to store the excess of dead bodies. South Beach was mostly flop houses and senior citizens trying to escape the wide-open drug gang wars. Some people said the Magic City had become the devil's playground.

In 1983, Oliver Stone wrote the script for Scarface at the same time he was fighting off his own cocaine addiction. For those viewing the film in the majority of the country, it was just entertainment, but for those who lived in the Miami area, it was the frightening truth. Tony Montana, Al Pacino’s character, was as realistic as they came. The famous chainsaw scene, filmed at the Sun Ray Apartments on South Beach's Ocean Drive, was close to the real thing.

Although most of the film was shot in Miami and Miami Beach, the Miami Tourist Board was afraid of a negative reputation that would drive even more tourists away. That prompted some scenes to be shot in California, such as Tony's trophy house, known as the El Fureidis Estate, in Montecito, California. It was Tony’s palatial trophy home that was a big part of the movie carnage when Tony killed over 20 assassins in his final desperate stand.

Now for sale, the 10-acre Scarface estate was designed as a Roman villa in the early 1900s by architect Bertram Goodhue. He and the owner, James Waldron Gillespie, a wealthy New Yorker, traveled to the Middle East and Europe for a year looking for inspiration. That resulted in adding Persian touches such as the gardens and fountains and accents like a Byzantine-style sitting room with an 18-foot domed ceiling decorated with a floral hand-painted, gold and blue design in 24k gold-leaf recreating a scene of Alexander the Great conquering Persepolis.

Ironically, it was Scarface along with the 1980's hit TV series Miami Vice that were largely responsible for resurrecting Miami Beach giving millions of viewers a look at the ocean, beach and architecture that once made it the most popular vacation city in the United States. The dumpy building where the Scarface chainsaw scene was filmed is now a restaurant near South Beach's most expensive strip of Art Deco hotels that recently sold for $12.4 million.

At 10,000 square feet, the mansion has four bedrooms, nine bathrooms, a library, sitting room and a lounge. A large rooftop terrace provides 360-degree views of the Pacific Ocean, mountains and Channel Islands and makes an excellent venue for large scale entertaining.

Montecito estate used as Tony Montano’s lavish killing mansion in the film Scarface is for sale at $35 million.

Source: www.toptenrealestatedeals.com