




Calling all fans of pop culture, L.A. architecture and unbound creativity: Here’s a wild book just for you.
While you can’t tour the famed streamline moderne home in North Hollywood of Grammy/Tony/Emmy winner and Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee Allee Willis, who died in 2019, you can get a great approximation of the experience through “Willis Wonderland: The Legendary House of Atomic Kitsch.”
Between the covers of the recently released book are eight extraordinary, 3D pop-ups re-creating the bubble-gum pink house built in 1937 (rumored to be the party house of MGM studio heads and stars back in the day), which Willis adorned floor to ceiling with one-of-a-kind kitsch decor.
The book is also aimed at keeping her legacy going, as all proceeds from the book go to the Willis Wonderland Foundation, which funds Musical Wonders, a student songwriting program for schools throughout the country. That’s according to Hillary Carlip, who co-wrote and designed “Willis Wonderland.”
Said Carlip: “Everyone knows something about Allee without knowing it’s her. She wrote the ‘Friends’ theme song, and music for the stage show of ‘The Color Purple,’ and then it was used in the movie as well. She wrote some of the biggest classic hits of all time, songs like ‘September’ by Earth, Wind and Fire.”
In fact it was another Earth, Wind and Fire number, “Boogie Wonderland,” that led to the creation of Willis Wonderland — after living hand-to-mouth on food stamps, she received her first windfall, a massive residuals check for writing the hit song. With that, she bought the house and began turning it into her own wonderland.
“She was just so talented,” said Carlip, who was a personal friend. “She was also a multimedia artist — she made motorized art pieces. She did set design for a lot of ’80s shows; she had a huge painting and ceramics career. She was early in the Internet — she had a business with Mark Cuban before he was Mark Cuban. And so she’s just a trailblazer in every creative avenue possible.”
Carlip, a multimedia artist herself and author of numerous titles including the best-selling memoir “Queen of the Oddballs,” met Willis in the ’80s and collaborated in the ’90s.
“She was famous for her asymmetrical haircut, longer on one side, shorter on the other, and I have the privilege to say I knew her when her hair was even,” Carlip said. “She also threw these legendary parties in this beautiful home that she created. She was so highbrow and lowbrow, and loved to mix up the guest list. Like, I have a picture of her with Joni Mitchell and the Del Rubio triplets! She was just a phenomenal woman and created this unbelievable house with this huge collection of kitsch.”
The book came about when Willis’ partner, Prudence Fenton, reached out to Carlip. She wanted something “to capture it in a way that really represents it and makes people feel like they’re in it. That is unusual and creative in a way that Allee was.”
“And so she asked me, ‘Do you think you could do a pop-up book?’ And I just said, ‘Sure!’ I knew nothing about it. So, you know, I started researching, and it’s incredible what goes into it.”
Carlip assembled an international team, with astonishingly accurate illustrations done by Neal McCullough out of Ireland, and the mechanics of the elaborate pop-ups accomplished by Paris-based paper engineer Mike Malkovas.
The finished product took a year to complete. Co-written with Trudi Roth, the book features a foreword by midcentury pop culture expert Charles Phoenix.
This pop-up on steroids features seemingly endless surprises — pull one tab and a dog licks Willis’ face, pull another and it reveals the hit records on the wall, spin a wheel and it changes the outfit she is wearing. The collective effect is joyful; the creativity, infectious.
“I think Allee would be happy with it,” says Carlip.