Inside the ranch home of "The Biggest Loser'

When "The Biggest Loser" wraps up its season tonight on NBC, the winner will walk away from The Ranch with $250,000. But where is this place: The Ranch? Turns out it's actually the historic former home near Malibu Canyon of razor heir King Gillette, one of the more interesting Angelenos of yore. ZevWeb takes a tour:

For months at a time, the mountainous acreage is home to dozens of contestants who battle their demons and their weight to gain the title of “The Biggest Loser,” along with a tidy purse of $250,000. But the property, complete with its Hollywood-imported state-of-the-art gym, is no ordinary production set.

Unbeknownst to the NBC show’s millions of fans, who’ll be tuning in for tonight’s finale, “The Ranch” is one of Los Angeles’ most historic and dazzling properties, designed by famed architect Wallace Neff in the late 1920s for razor-blade tycoon King Gillette. In 2005, an unprecedented coalition of government agencies, including Los Angeles County, raised $34 million to protect the ranch’s 600 oak-studded acres from expansive development.

Located along Mulholland Highway in Calabasas, King Gillette Ranch is being transformed into a gateway destination for the Santa Monica Mountains recreation area. A new visitor’s center currently is under construction there. The property is operated by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, which receives $50,000 a month from the show to help underwrite the agency’s operations throughout the region....

“Season after season, you see them around the property,” Hughes says. “You can see the sadness in their eyes.” But then, after weeks of healthy dieting and high-intensity workouts, “you can literally see their spirits lift. It’s an amazing transition.”

Gillette, who died in 1932, was a Utopian Socialist who hob-nobbed with the likes of author and crusader Upton Sinclair. He had another interesting home in Los Angeles: #100 in the gated Fremont Place community, which he had built in the style of a Honolulu hotel with coconut palms and sugar cane. There's still cane visible in the backyard. The home was later occupied by James Francis Cardinal McIntyre, leader of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese in Los Angeles.

Previously on LA Observed:
Checkered past