Paul (1861-1942) and Zida (1876-1975) Marlay co-owned the 1920-1921 tract that gave us Marlay Drive and Marmont Lane. Paul Henry Marlay grew up in Lincoln, NE, where he got into banking by the age of 24. Figuring he’d be more successful as the big fish in a small pond, he left Lincoln for tiny Mason City, NE and ran a bank there. Successful he was, and Marlay took frequent West Coast trips with first wife Jessie and daughter Pauline. In 1910, a year after Jessie divorced him for cruelty and non-support, Marlay purchased significant acreage in these hills and became VP of the Lookout Mountain Park Land & Water Co. At this point he started coming to L.A. on a regular basis, staying at the exclusive Jonathan Club while keeping a home base in Mason City. He married Zida V. Whitaker in 1920; she grew up elsewhere in Nebraska and had spent some time in Kansas City before relocating to Los Angeles in 1906. A 44-year-old stenographer, it’s unknown why she waited so long to marry or how she met Paul Marlay to begin with, but they lived on Boylston Street for around a decade before moving to Venice. Zida married twice more in old age – first to Edward Van Sciver in 1944, then to John Griffith in the 1950s. She spent her final years in Pomona.
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