CARRIAGE TRADE: The People’s Pool

After its fashion, Hollywood was doing its bit to fight the high cost of living. Paddock Engineering Co., which has built almost all of California’s swimming pools (50% of those in the U.S.), gravely announced a “People’s Pool.” Through ads in Los Angeles papers, this symbol of high living was placed within easy reach of the common man; a swimming pool could be ordered by merely sending in the tearaway coupon. The price: $2,500. By last week, 63 orders had been placed for People’s Pools.

Six-Day Wonder. Producer of the People’s Pool is Philip Ilsley, 51, thrice-married brother of Canada’s Minister of Justice and onetime farmer, art dealer, lecturer, florist and real-estate man. He developed the cost-saving construction method while building houses (and pools) for movie stars in 1936 at fashionable Brentwood. Instead of a flatbottomed, straight-sided pool, which needed expensive forms and supports, he used a rounded bottom, based on steel-wire mesh. By using a pneumatic hose to pour the concrete, Ilsley cut construction time to six days.

Hollywood liked the seamless bowls so much that Paddock, pool-purveyor to cinemoguls since 1922, hired Ilsley as a consultant. When Pascal Paddock, company president, decided to sell in 1939, Ilsley bought him out for a mere $17,000. During the war, Ilsley built pools and water tanks for the Army & Navy, thus was ready to dive back into private pools at war’s end. Now he produces about one custom-made pool a day (average cost: about $10,000), paid himself $41,000 last year in salary and bonuses. The company netted $59,730. With the People’s Pool, he expects to gross well over $3,000,000. Of this, $500,000 will be grossed on sales of pool accessories (diving boards, rubber mattresses, etc.).

Everyday Sights. Pool buyers long ago learned that the first cost of a swimming pool is only a start; there is also a fat annual fee for maintenance. In Southern California, a lot of the upkeep goes to an Ilsley maintenance subsidiary which employs 60-odd workmen, grosses $500,000.

Much of their work consists of regular deck-scrubbing, water-testing, leaf-skimming, and extracting dead rats and bobby pins from pools. In Beverly Hills, whose 700-odd pools occupy most of their time, the job is far from routine. After police had searched two days for Actor Joseph Cotten’s car, reported stolen, Cotten found it and called Ilsley’s men to retrieve it, from his pool. Another time, they fished a live deer out of Joan Fontaine’s pool. Jack Benny, who had an octopus molded into the bottom of his tank for laughs, called the maintenance men to gouge out the octopus’ eyes; they scared his children.

Although the maintenance men come by appointment, they are used to seeing bare sunbathers jump up, let.out a squeal, and do a header into a towel. At the home of one Hollywood star (first magnitude), the maintenance man often finds her with a male guest, necking at the poolside. Says the imperturbable workman: “We just work around ’em.”