Mover to the stars and a president thrives for 85 years by pitching pampering and privacy
With 30 days to vacate her 56,500-square-foot mansion, Candy Spelling had decades of rococo treasures to relocate. So producer Aaron Spelling’s widow hired California’s oldest — and perhaps most discreet — moving company.
Stretching back to Hollywood’s Golden Era, Rene’s Van & Storage is a lens into the history of celebrity real estate, with a client list dominated by the famous or just plain rich, all drawn by a combination of whiteglove service and the ability to keep a secret.
The Lambert family, the firm’s owners, has relocated an incoming U.S. president, a notorious mobster, multiple leading men and screen sirens.
“I understand why this business has stood around for 85 years, and it’s mum’s the word,” said Marshall Lambert, president of the Los Angeles company, remembering that some family members were apoplectic when he told them he was going to start an Instagram page.
“The privacy. It’s why customers trust us. It’s why they come back,” Lambert said.
But what might seem like a terrible marketing strategy in the age of search engine optimization and viral posts has helped keep Lambert’s fourth-generation family business alive through economic downturns and unforeseen increases in the cost of doing business.
Rene’s Van & Storage’s clients are less price sensitive, Lambert said, although they do have unusual ways of measuring trustworthiness.
“‘Well, you passed the test,’” Lambert said one affluent homeowner once told him. “‘I left two brandnew Rolexes in the top drawer of my dresser, and when it got to my new house, they were there. You’re my mover for the rest of my life.’”
Marshall Lambert’s great-grandfather Bernard Lambert founded the first version of the company in 1933, after relocating his family to the United States from Beaumont, Canada.
Clark Gable was one of the earliest celebrity clients, and Beverly Hills was the destination of choice. Nowadays, company trucks might be seen in Calabasas moving a Kardashian or waiting for entry into the gated nouveau Hollywood enclave of Hidden Hills.
In 1945, Marshall’s grandfather Rene Lambert opened Rene’s Van & Storage with his wife, Marjorie, and the two companies competed for clients.
Through the early 1960s, Rene and Marjorie’s company bought out several local rivals and built a starstudded list of clients, including Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, Bob Hope, Ernie Kovacs, Edie Adams, Jayne Mansfield, Dean Martin, Danny Thomas and Groucho Marx.
In 1963, Rene’s Van & Storage bought Lambert’s Van & Storage from family members and consolidated operations under one roof. In the 1970s and the 1980s, clients included such notables as Steve Mcqueen, Robert Stack, Marlon Brando, Elvis Presley, Rita Hayworth, John Huston, Natalie Wood and the estate of John Wayne. In 1981, the company moved the Reagans into the White House.
By 1998, Rene and Marjorie’s three sons — Russell, Rene Jr. and Ricky, Marshall’s father — were running the business. In 2006, Marshall left a film production equipment company where he had worked for 17 years to join Rene’s Van & Storage as a vice president.
The company’s website advises potential clients of the lengths it goes to pamper customers.
All movers wear white gloves and booties while on the job.
Wooden crates are custom built for oddly shaped and oversize items.
The value of what they move is sometimes best kept secret, Lambert said. For instance, the 12-plate serving set valued at $12,000.
Fine art, furniture and other valuables are stored in floor-to-ceiling crates throughout the company’s 88,000-square-foot warehouse near Griffith Park, which resembles the famous final scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
Mobster Bugsy Siegel, wanted some of his stored furniture returned to his home and placed in front of the windows. It didn’t help; Siegel was rubbed out at his girlfriend’s house.
Marshall Lambert’s other grandfather, David Lopez, also worked at the moving company and once was called out to a Santa Barbara ranch to help move a very heavy refrigerator. But Lopez couldn’t get it to budge.
Then future President Ronald Reagan rode up on his horse and tied a rope around the refrigerator.
“Reagan smacks the horse on the butt, and out flies the fridge,” Lambert said, recalling the muchtold tale that never leaked outside Lambert’s family. Maybe that’s why, not long after the refrigerator extraction, Reagan called Rene Lambert for help moving to the White House.
The business got a rare dose of exposure in 2011 when the Spelling move was filmed as part of a twoepisode HGTV reality show, “Selling Spelling Manor.”
“I was thinking, ‘What did I get myself into?’ ” Lambert said, because not only were there multiple TV cameras, the mansion contained 14 bedrooms, 27 bathrooms and 82 other rooms. But his 15-worker crew was finished in just 28 days, “and we’re talking 9½-hour days.”