Let's Go Places: Malabar Farm State Park, Ohio

 

Friends, I'd like to take you to a very special place today.  Can I interest you in a trip to a farm that's a state park in the middle of nowhere?

I guess that doesn't really sell it.  Let me up the ante by telling you that Malabar Farm State Park is a one stop shop for:

• State park stuff.  Nature and hiking (OK, I'm mildly interested)
• The farm is historically important for promoting sustainable agriculture (OK, that's somewhat interesting.  If I had another reason to go there I'd be open to learning more)
• Was the home of a Pulitzer Prize Winning Big Deal 20th Century Novelist who might not be a household name now but was in the same league as Fitzgerald and Hemmingway back in the day (that's more like it!  But in Ohio?)
• Some of the exterior scenes for a Big Deal 90s movie were filmed here (Hmm, depending on the movie I might be interested)
• Was a hangout for Everybody Who Was Anybody in Hollywood in the 40s (Now you've really got my attention!  But why were big movie stars coming out to Ohio of all places?)
• Was the scene of a Big Hollywood Wedding (hey you already sold me!  WHO?????)

To sweeten the deal, I will tell you that Malabar Farm has visitor options for $0, $3, $6 or you can go for broke and spend $9 to do everything.  Let's go there!

Let's start with a map so that we can see where we are - like I said it's kind of the middle of nowhere. 

And now let me fill in the blanks that I teased before:

• The Shawshank Redemption is the Big Deal 90s movie that filmed on Malabar Farm.  The cabin from the opening scene of the movie is here, and toward the end of the movie one of the characters rides a bus out into the country and takes a walk by a big tree.  The tree was later struck by lightning and had to be taken down, but that was at Malabar.  Other exterior scenes and the prison used in the movie are about half an hour away in the town of Mansfield, Ohio (spoiler, we'll be going there in a future post).
• All the big movie stars were hanging out in Ohio in the 40s because of the owner of the farm, who we'll get to in a minute.  Travel was limited in WWII, so they couldn't just jet set off to Europe.  Domestic train service was a different story, and it was very easy to get from Hollywood to the farm.
• The big Hollywood wedding happened in 1945.  Of all the gins joints in all the towns in all the world, Malabar was the place that Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall picked to say "I do".

As best I can remember, I knew from my studies of Hollywood history that Bogie and Bacall got married at a place called Malabar Farm, but it was a long time before I made the connection to the freeway sign that I've passed one billion times in my life while driving to Columbus.  I read some of Bromfield's books in college, but all of these things together didn't scream OMG THERE IS THIS FABULOUS PLACE THAT HAS BEEN PRESERVED IN AMBER EXACTLY LIKE IT WAS THAT'S OPEN MOST OF THE YEAR FOR TOURS!!!!!  It was only last year when I started looking for unique places to go that I connected the dots.

Let do some backstory before we start our tour.  I'm just repeating what I heard and how I understand it, so you may want to do your own research.  Louis Bromfield is the world famous Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, and in the words of the tour guide, it is almost certain that he had ADHD.  He could never stand still and was never happy unless he was doing 10 things at once.  That's how someone goes from being born in a small town in Ohio to studying agriculture during his brief time at college to driving an ambulance in WWI to moving to New York after the war was over and becoming a journalist and that's only Act I.

According to legend Bromfield wrote a review of a Broadway play in the early 20s where his summary was that all of the actors needed to find other lines of work.  Later that night he found himself in a bar with the cast of the play - he knew who they were and they knew who he was.  They worked out their differences and everyone was friends by the end of the night.  One of those actors was an up and coming Humphrey Bogart, so that was the beginning of that beautiful friendship.

Bromfield started writing novels and got himself a Pulitzer and wrote a best seller every year for many years as one does.  Some of his books were adapted into movies which was his entry into Hollywood.  Let's go ahead and address the elephant in the room which is why you haven't heard of this great author.  It's simply that his books were a big deal at the time, but they haven't aged well, so you don't need to jump up and start reading him.  I know that I read him at some point, but there's nothing in my memory that's leaping out.  My favorite work of his is the movie Night After Night, which was Mae West's first movie - though she wrote her dialogue and not him.  So really this clip is just Mae West fangirling and nothing to do with Bromfield.

Anyhoo Bromfield and Mrs. Bromfield and their three daughters were living it up in France and having a fine old time but the further they got into the 1930's the more he was thinking that he didn't like what he was seeing on the news.  The Bromfields packed up in 1938 and headed straight for his hometown in Ohio.  Louis pulled out a wad of cash and bought up a couple of adjoining farms on some very pretty hillside that reminded him of India, so he called it Malabar Farm.

Step One: renovate existing 12 room farm house into a 28 room farm house.

Step 2: do farm stuff.  I'm out of my depth here, but from what I understand Bromfield wasn't just a pretty face.  He was big on crop rotation and whatever it is that you need to do to have good farmland instead of ending up with a Dust Bowl situation.  The fact that he was one person doing this on one farm wasn't the big deal, it was the fact that he was one person doing this on one farm who happened to be a celebrity and talked about his work every chance that he got and wrote a couple of best selling books about it.  It was a "think globally act locally" situation.

The barn is part of the free stuff to do at Malabar.  Yes it's still an active farm.

Goats, sheep, horses, cows, chickens and oh my.

But we're really here to see big Hollywood, so let's check out the house.  That's the big money item at $6 per tour.  The Bromfields lived here from 1938 to their deaths in the mid 50s and all of their furniture and belongings have been preserved.

The front room is where Bogie and Bacall got married.  Plan A was to have the ceremony outside, which would have worked except that when you get married at your friend's place in rural Ohio and that friend's only phone is on a party line, well everyone kind of knows your business.  As it was the celebs stayed inside and the police kept the wedding crashers at bay.

Around the corner the Bromfields had a small sitting room, their bedroom, and Louis's office.  His WFH desk is nicer than my WFH desk.  My pictures somehow don't show this, but the rooms are packed with bookcases and books.  Bromfield didn't just write, he read.

We can learn a lot from celebrities.  Bromfield was offered an endorsement deal for a whiskey company.  He wanted the money but he didn't like the brand...what to do what to do...yes have your dogs and the cat pose for the ad with the farm house with the "Malabar Farm" sign in the background.  OK, I guess I need to do a bit more work to make that relevant to my own life.

 

Bromfield loved his dogs and let them have the run of the house.  At several places during the tour they paused to show the damage - scratches on doors, various stains, and a vase that the dogs knocked over and was repaired.  Between the dogs and all of the pictures of cigarettes in the family photos, my guess is that being in the house today is a much more pleasant experience than it was back in the day.

From there the tour moves upstairs to the guest suites.  There's a guest wall of the folks who stayed at Malabar.  But just a note that you didn't stay at Malabar for free.  Everyone had to work on the farm when they were staying there.  Legend has it that James Cagney's favorite job was to run the vegetable stand and that Shirley Temple was partial to milking cows.

My favorite picture is George Burns and Gracie Allen.  He wrote "Here it is Louis: You're lucky you've got the photograph but I've still got the face.  Sincerely, George" and she wrote "Dear Louis, don't let your wife see this. Love, Gracie xx"

If you ever wanted to see where Bogie and Bacall spent their wedding night, here it is.  Lauren is on record as saying that they pushed the beds together.  By the way, speaking as someone who sleeps in a California king bed, it's mind boggling to tour these grand old houses and see all of the twin beds.

They made up for it with HUGE bathrooms.

Further down the hall upstairs is the kids' suite.  When you're big Hollywood your kids have their own section of the house - their own living room, bedrooms, and apartment for their nanny.

And then back downstairs to the dining room where the wedding reception was held.

Pop quiz: what was Bromfield's favorite color?

That's the house.  The tour takes about an hour and a half, so you get a lot for your $6.  Let's move on to the $3 option and do a farm tour.

The farm is huge, so the tour is helpful for getting the lay of the land and hearing more of the great stories.  They drive you past Pugh cabin, which is the opening shot of Shawshank.

And past the house that was the scene of "the Ohio Lizzie Borden murders".  Ohio folks go for arsenic over axes.

You also get to see the Bromfields' final resting place.

Last but not least let's do the free stuff.  We've already talked about the barn, and once you've done the farm tour you'll know how to get to Pugh cabin, the Ceeley Rose house, and the cemetery.

There are a couple of hiking trails near the cabin that are worth checking out.

And finally, there's Mt Jeez down the road a bit.  If you like epic 360 views, this is your place.

 

So that's Malabar Farm - or at least as much of it as I've seen to date from a few visits.  Big park, big agriculture, and big Hollywood.  I've seen some amazing places, and Malabar is near the top of the list.

In this place of huge things I'll leave you with a small picture that I took on my first visit last summer.

 

Somebody make my day!  Has anyone heard of Malabar Farm or Louis Bromfield?