Latest news with #TheTreasureoftheSierraMadre
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
John Huston's Former L.A. Ranch Has a Miniature Disney Railroad, and It Just Listed for $20 Million
All aboard: A one-of-a-kind ranch in Tarzana, California, with its own fully operational miniature train, has just popped up for sale. The charming abode, which is on the market for $20 million with David Kramer of Compass and Paul Czako of Gussman Czako Estates, was originally built in 1941 for Academy Award-winning actor-director John Huston. The late Hollywood legend, famous for The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, lived at the private estate back when the San Fernando Valley still had a Wild West vibe. He welcomed many big-name 'cowboys' into his digs, including famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. More from Robb Report A 2,000-Acre Montana Ranch With 20 Private Ski Runs Lists for $24 Million Bill Koch's World-Class Wine Collection Just Sold for a Record $28.8 Million at Auction Inside a Luxe New Resort and Spa That Just Opened on the Greek Island of Crete RELATED: Late TV Legend Bob Newhart's Longtime L.A. Home Is Up for Grabs at $10.5 Million The 4.44-acre estate offers more than just an A-list pedigree, though. In 1959, the gated compound was snapped up by Gordon and Holly MacLean, friends of Disney and die-hard train collectors, who added one truly unique feature. With Disney's input, the MacLeans built the Tunnel, Cut & Trestle Railroad: a 7.5-inch gauge track that allows a tiny train to wind through the grounds. The circuit includes bridges, turntables, road signs, and a 240-foot tunnel that is long enough to make you briefly forget you're in Los Angeles. The dual-track system is no toy—it's engineered to run steam, electric, and propane-powered engines, giving the new owner plenty of options for trains. Over the years, the railroad has become a neighborhood legend, hosting community rides and drawing in fellow rail buffs from the L.A. Live Steamers Museum in Griffith Park. Each owner has kept the tradition alive—and yes, a mini-train is included in the sale. RELATED: Former Celtics Co-Owner Jim Pallotta Lists His Sprawling Massachusetts Estate for $38 Million The rest of the estate is just as over-the-top. There's a 12,170-square-foot, three-story main house with six bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, and nine fireplaces. A stone-lined pool flows partially under the house. A reimagined red barn—once a utilitarian structure, now an entertaining lodge—adds another 2,775 square feet, plus a kitchen, bar, bedroom, and loft. Toss in an 807-square-foot guest cottage, a nearly 2,000-square-foot train depot, and a storage wing, because why not? All up, eight bedrooms, 14 bathrooms, and 11 fireplaces are spread across more than 17,000 square feet of living space. Outside, the grounds feel like a private park, with koi ponds, stone paths, rolling lawns, a tennis court, a dog run, and a children's play area. You could hike up the hills, host a wedding, or fire up the steam engine for a spin around the trestle—whatever takes your fancy. The Tarzana compound is equal parts film set, fantasy camp, and legacy property, making it a great addition to any of Robb Report The 10 Priciest Neighborhoods in America (And How They Got to Be That Way) In Pictures: Most Expensive Properties Click here to read the full article.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - Trump versus Obama: ‘Fundamental transformation' is in the eye of the beholder
On Oct. 30, 2008, just days before the presidential election, Barack Obama stood before a crowd in Columbia, Missouri, and uttered the line that sent Republicans into a frenzy: 'We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.' To conservatives, that line wasn't just annoying — it was something akin to blasphemy. Transform America? Change who we are and what we stand for? The outrage came fast and furious. Republicans lined up to say, 'We don't need fundamental change. We don't need to tear down what makes this country great.' Those were the days when 'principles' were still something people claimed to care about, the key word being 'claimed.' Fast forward to now, and we've got another president who wants to fundamentally transform America. Only this time, it's not the guy who campaigned on hope and change. It's the one who sues pollsters whose numbers he doesn't like, sues news networks whose coverage he doesn't like and wants to impeach federal judges whose rulings he doesn't like. He has even gone after law firms that had the audacity to offend our president because they represented clients he didn't like. If he had his way, Canada would be our 51st state. NATO? Out the window. Allies? Alienated. Chaos? Right here at home, courtesy of the commander-in-chief. And yet, this time around, the same people who gasped for air over Obama's 'transformative' language are — how do I say this gently? — eerily silent. The same party that once warned us against changing the fundamental fabric of the country is now applauding the president who is changing the fabric of the country. The double standard isn't just obvious — it's embarrassing. Meanwhile, Democrats — who once gave Obama a standing ovation for his grand vision — are now warning us that President Trump is a fascist for trying to do the exact same thing. So yes, if you're keeping score at home, the party that once loved transformation now hates it, and the party that once hated it now can't get enough. Let me know when your head stops spinning. But this isn't really about Obama or Trump. It's about something deeper, something we've lost along the way: principles. I've written about this before, and I'll keep writing about it, because it's the story of our political era. We don't argue ideas anymore — we just root for the color of the uniform. Red jerseys versus blue jerseys. That's what politics has become. And to paraphrase that great line from 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre' — 'We don't need no stinking principles.' Sure, politics has always been divisive. Nothing new about that. But what is new is the complete and utter collapse of consistency. If your guy does it, it's fine. If the other guy does it, it's tyranny. If your team wins, it's democracy in action. If the other team wins, it's the end of the republic. I guess it's possible that I'm making too much of this. Maybe the hypocrisy has always been there and it just feels worse now because of social media, cable news and the 24/7 outrage machine. But I don't think so. I think we've crossed a line where principles no longer guide our politics — only blind loyalty to our team does. And when blind loyalty becomes the only principle, don't be surprised when the whole thing starts to fall apart. So no, this isn't just about Obama in 2008 or Trump in 2025. It's about what we're willing to tolerate and what we're willing to ignore — and whether we still believe in anything bigger than winning. Because if we don't, then we're not only transforming America — we're unraveling it. Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Substack page. Follow him @BernardGoldberg. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
03-04-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Trump versus Obama: ‘Fundamental transformation' is in the eye of the beholder
On Oct. 30, 2008, just days before the presidential election, Barack Obama stood before a crowd in Columbia, Missouri, and uttered the line that sent Republicans into a frenzy: 'We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.' To conservatives, that line wasn't just annoying — it was something akin to blasphemy. Transform America? Change who we are and what we stand for? The outrage came fast and furious. Republicans lined up to say, 'We don't need fundamental change. We don't need to tear down what makes this country great.' Those were the days when 'principles' were still something people claimed to care about, the key word being 'claimed.' Fast forward to now, and we've got another president who wants to fundamentally transform America. Only this time, it's not the guy who campaigned on hope and change. It's the one who sues pollsters whose numbers he doesn't like, sues news networks whose coverage he doesn't like and wants to impeach federal judges whose rulings he doesn't like. He has even gone after law firms that had the audacity to offend our president because they represented clients he didn't like. If he had his way, Canada would be our 51st state. NATO? Out the window. Allies? Alienated. Chaos? Right here at home, courtesy of the commander-in-chief. And yet, this time around, the same people who gasped for air over Obama's 'transformative' language are — how do I say this gently? — eerily silent. The same party that once warned us against changing the fundamental fabric of the country is now applauding the president who is changing the fabric of the country. The double standard isn't just obvious — it's embarrassing. Meanwhile, Democrats — who once gave Obama a standing ovation for his grand vision — are now warning us that President Trump is a fascist for trying to do the exact same thing. So yes, if you're keeping score at home, the party that once loved transformation now hates it, and the party that once hated it now can't get enough. Let me know when your head stops spinning. But this isn't really about Obama or Trump. It's about something deeper, something we've lost along the way: principles. I've written about this before, and I'll keep writing about it, because it's the story of our political era. We don't argue ideas anymore — we just root for the color of the uniform. Red jerseys versus blue jerseys. That's what politics has become. And to paraphrase that great line from 'The Treasure of the Sierra Madre' — 'We don't need no stinking principles.' Sure, politics has always been divisive. Nothing new about that. But what is new is the complete and utter collapse of consistency. If your guy does it, it's fine. If the other guy does it, it's tyranny. If your team wins, it's democracy in action. If the other team wins, it's the end of the republic. I guess it's possible that I'm making too much of this. Maybe the hypocrisy has always been there and it just feels worse now because of social media, cable news and the 24/7 outrage machine. But I don't think so. I think we've crossed a line where principles no longer guide our politics — only blind loyalty to our team does. And when blind loyalty becomes the only principle, don't be surprised when the whole thing starts to fall apart. So no, this isn't just about Obama in 2008 or Trump in 2025. It's about what we're willing to tolerate and what we're willing to ignore — and whether we still believe in anything bigger than winning. Because if we don't, then we're not only transforming America — we're unraveling it.
The Guardian
30-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Just like McCarthy, Trump spreads fear everywhere before picking off his targets
'Gold, mister, is worth what it is because of the human labor that goes into the finding and getting of it.' It's a line spoken by Walter Huston in the 1948 film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, a story about greed and moral corruption directed by his son, John Huston. That line was to have appeared on screen at the beginning of the film. It didn't, on orders from the studio, Warner Bros. 'It was all on account of the word 'labor',' John Huston later reflected. 'That word looks dangerous in print, I guess.' It was a relatively insignificant moment in the drama of America's postwar red scare. McCarthyism proper had still to take flight. Yet, so deep ran the fear already that a single, everyday word could create consternation in Hollywood. McCarthyism, the historian Ellen Schrecker has observed, 'was a peculiarly American style of repression – nonviolent and consensual. Only two people were killed; only a few hundred went to jail.' Yet it constituted 'one of the most severe episodes of political repression the United States ever experienced'. Sackings and legal sanctions created such fear that, in the words of the political philosopher Corey Robin, society was put 'on lockdown', with people so 'petrified of being punished for their political beliefs' that 'they drew in their political limbs'. It was not just communists who were silenced. 'If someone insists that there is discrimination against Negroes in this country, or that there is an inequality of wealth,' claimed the chair of one state committee on un-American activities, 'there is every reason to believe that person is a communist.' This at a time when Jim Crow still held the south in its grip. The red scare paused the civil rights movement for more than a decade and drew the teeth of union radicalism. Fear has always been a means of enforcing social order, most obviously in authoritarian states, from China to Saudi Arabia, Turkey to Russia, where repression becomes the foundation of political rule. In liberal democracies, order rests more on consensus than overt brutality. But here, too, fear plays its role. The worker's fear of being sacked, the claimant's of being sanctioned, the renter's of being made homeless, the fear of the working-class mother facing a social worker or of the black teenager walking past a policeman – relations of power are also relations of fear, but fears usually so sublimated that we simply accept that that's the way the system works. It is when consensus ruptures, when social conflict erupts, or when the authorities need to assert their power, that liberal democracies begin wielding fear more overtly as a political tool to quieten dissent or impose authority. Think of how the British state treated Irish people in the 1970s and 1980s, or miners during the great strike of 1984/85. Seventy years on from McCarthyism, America seems to be entering such a moment. Over the past month, we have seen the mass deportation to a notorious foreign jail of hundreds of people declared to be illegal immigrants and gang members, without evidence or due process; the arrest, detention and threatened deportation of foreign students, including Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, Momodou Taal and Yunseo Chung, for protesting about the war in Gaza; the blacklisting of law firms representing clients of whom Donald Trump does not approve; the mass sackings of federal workers. Fear works here in two ways. The targets of repression are groups about whom it is easier to create fear, and so easier to deprive of rights and due process. Doing so then creates a wider climate of fear in which people become less willing to speak out, and not just about Palestine. Already, 'whole segments of American society [are] running scared', as one observer put it. Institutions such as universities, Schrecker concluded about the 1950s, 'did not fight McCarthyism' but 'contributed to it', not only through dismissals and blacklists but also through accepting 'the legitimacy of what the congressional committees and other official investigators were doing', thereby conferring 'respectability upon the most repressive elements' of the process. It's a process repeating itself today. Earlier this month, after cancelling $400m (£310m) in federal grants and contracts, Trump made a series of demands of Columbia University, including that it change its disciplinary rules, place the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies department under 'academic receivership' and adopt the contested International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism that its own lead drafter, Kenneth Stern, condemns as having been 'weaponised' into 'a blunt instrument to label anyone an antisemite' and to 'go after pro-Palestinian speech'. Last week, Columbia capitulated. Sign up to Observed Analysis and opinion on the week's news and culture brought to you by the best Observer writers after newsletter promotion Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan University, one of the few academic leaders willing to speak out, decries 'the greatest pressure put on intellectual life since the McCarthy era', describing 'anticipatory obedience' as 'a form of cowardice'. Cowardice, though, has become the defining trait, most university leaders 'just happy that Columbia is the whipping boy'. Columbia may be the first university in Trump's crosshairs, but it won't be the last. Keeping silent won't save them. In his incendiary speech in Munich in February, the US vice-president, JD Vance, harangued European leaders to worry less about Russia than 'the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values', especially free speech. The same, it would seem, applies to America, too. Many of those who previously so vigorously upheld the importance of free speech have suddenly lost their voice or now believe that speech should be free only for those with the right kinds of views. The brazen hypocrisy of Vance, and of the fair-weather supporters of free speech, should nevertheless not lead us to ignore the fact that, from more intrusive policing of social media to greater restrictions on our ability to protest to the disciplining, even sacking, of workers holding 'gender-critical views', these are issues to which we urgently need to attend. 'I live in an age of fear,' lamented the essayist and author EB White in 1947, after the New York Herald had suggested that all employees be forced to declare their political beliefs to retain their jobs. He was, he insisted, less worried 'that there were communists in Hollywood' than to 'read your editorial in praise of loyalty testing and thought control'. It is a perspective as vital now as it was then, and as necessary on this side of the Atlantic as in America. Kenan Malik is an Observer columnist
