Times salutes Ruth Ryon, creator of buzz-building Hot Property column
Although Hot Property will continue, this week Ruth Ryon will be filing her last installment of the feature she created almost a quarter-century ago.
Hot Property was kicked off on Nov. 25, 1984, with an item about Johnny Carson buying a home in Malibu for $9.5 million, a record-setter for the community at the time.
Ryon was one of the first journalists in the country to recognize that readers shared her passion for a glimpse into the homes and lifestyles of Hollywood celebrities, sports figures and captains of industry. It was in reading Parade magazine that she got the idea to write the column as short, pithy items. Her writing style was the voice of the woman behind the pen: She let the facts, in understated prose, speak for themselves.
Although it was then-Real Estate editor Dick Turpin and Times' associate editor Jean Sharley Taylor who gave her the go-ahead for the column in 1984, then-deputy associate editor Shelby Coffey III saw its potent reader interest and moved it to the front page of the section in 1987, where it remains a fixture.
On the week that the column made its cover debut, it led off with Joan Collins bickering with Peter Holm over his request for temporary spousal support and assured readers that the "Dynasty" star was not in jeopardy of losing part or all of the Beverly Hills mansion she bought for $2 million in May 1986.
Hot Property went out on the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service at about that time and today appears in newspapers across the country.
"Most newspaper real estate sections were dull wastelands when Ruthie got the idea in the mid-80s to combine celebs and shelter under one roof called 'Hot Property,' and nothing has been the same since," said former Real Estate editor Dick Barnes. "Everyone else followed the path she blazed."
Among the imitators, People magazine offered On the Block, and the Wall Street Journal started its Private Properties feature. In recent years, blogs have picked up the trail of celebrity transitions, including RealEstalker and Big Time Listings.
The Real Estate section is indebted to Ruth Ryon for putting us on the map to the stars, so to speak, and for giving us more than 1,300 must-reads. We'll try to continue to carry the torch and keep Hot Property the first feature that readers grab out of the paper each Sunday morning and one of the most talked-about around the Monday morning water cooler.
