— H O U S E W A R M I N G —
Nancy Balbirer
The author offers a peek into her home in Santa Monica and shares what she loves most about it.
L Deborah Ehrlich
256
SPRING / SUMMER 2022
EAVE IT to an author to write her own love story. Memoirist Nancy Balbirer (A Marriage in Dog Years) had been best friends with Howard J. Morris (co-creator of the TV series Grace and Frankie) since their college days. She always felt something more, but the timing was never right. Until suddenly it was, “with the help of the Grace and Frankie writers’ room and the denizens of a fabled but cursed Manhattan apartment building,” Balbirer says.
The rest of the tale is in her new book, Almost Romance. Spoiler alert: After more than 30 years of friendship, Morris and Balbirer fell in love. They married in New York, and a few months later she moved into his townhouse in Santa Monica. During the interim period, she had his entire kitchen remodeled. “I spend a lot of time in the kitchen because I’m a big cook,” she explains. “I blew out everything but the Viking appliances.” Once that was accomplished, she and her daughter, Colette, moved in, and now the marble counter that separates the kitchen and living room is a favorite spot. “I got this big slab of Calacatta Gold [marble], the same exact slabs they used at the Getty Center,” Balbirer says. She finished her latest book perched on that counter with her laptop. Looking out from the kitchen to the living room, she sees a wall full of art that never fails to provide inspiration. “The gallery wall is such an expression of me and my life,” Balbirer says. “I’m a storyteller, so it’s telling a story.” Pictures by Colette mingle with paintings by Balbirer’s grandfather. “And there are things I’ve picked up along the way, like the nude torso by Harriet Kline that I got at the 26th Street flea market in Chelsea. And I’m obsessed with faces and old keys. It’s sort of a three-dimensional collage.” Next to the art wall stands a gorgeous art deco dry bar. “I bought it from Jason Gould, Barbra Streisand’s son, when we were at NYU. Either he told me or I dreamed this up, but she’s obsessed with antiques, and it was one of the first pieces she bought during the run of Funny Girl when she finally got some money. That became the legend of the bar.” For Balbirer, home is all about art, love, and stories. “I can’t believe I get to have a home with this person who’s been my best friend since I was 17,” she says of Morris. “This is my dream. The book is about how I got here. How we got here.” —Lisa Rosen
COLETTE CORIAT
A trio of storytellers: Balbirer, next to her favorite art wall and dry bar, both of which have intriguing tales of their own to tell
