South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Second floor
The residence, though expansive, was not an elaborate showplace. The Bartletts relished its Caribbean plantation-house style, which allowed for lots of sunlight but also cool rooms to relax in pre-air conditioning. Frederic Bartlett did much of the painting himself, including ceilings, floors, walls and portraits. He was also a collector, and wealthy enough to buy a trove of post-Impressionist paintings, including Georges Seurat’s enormous “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” which was donated to the Art Institute of Chicago, along with works by Picasso, van Gogh, Gauguin and other artists.
The family’s eccentricities are on display through the sculptures and paintings of elephants, giraffes and monkeys that decorate the walls and colorful hallways. A large family of monkeys used to prowl the property, but only one remains, said docent Kent Planck, author of the book, “Bonnet House: A Legacy of Artistry and Elegance.”
Volunteer docents lead tours of the downstairs almost daily, including the drawing room, dining room, piano room, courtyard, kitchen and painting studio. The Bamboo
Bar houses the Bartletts’ shell collections and was especially adored by their friends as the place to down Evelyn’s powerful Rangpur lime cocktail, made of four parts rum, one part lime juice and a dash of maple syrup.
Mounting the stairs, visitors take in a sweeping perspective of the colorful courtyard, where the Bartletts entertained dinner guests, and enter the bedrooms from the openair breezeway that wraps around the second floor.
“This was not a grand Palm Beach mansion,” Planck said. “It’s rustic up here.”
Still, ornate antique furniture fills the master bedroom, a gift to Helen Birch Bartlett upon her marriage to Bartlett in 1919. Planck shows the spots where Evelyn Bartlett hid her jewelry in the faux fireplace and where she stored her hatboxes and clothing; some of her original outfits still hang in a closet.
For an even more intense experience, visitors can spend “A Night at the Museum” and have the estate to themselves. A $5,000 donation allows the adventurous to sleep in a maid’s room upstairs, which has been modernized to serve as a bridal suite for the almost weekly weddings that take place on the property. The price includes dinner for two on the veranda and breakfast the next day. Dinner for eight is also available for the same price. This initiative has raised $107,000 toward the nonprofit’s upkeep, Shavloske said.
“Can I take a nap on the bed for $200?” joked
“This was not a grand Palm Beach mansion. It’s rustic up here.”
— Kent Planck, docent
Delray Beach resident Susan Tandy during a recent tour.
For those of more modest means, “Upstairs/ Downstairs” tours cost $40 and take about two hours. They are offered at 1 p.m. on the second, third and fourth Wednesdays of the month through April. To register, go to bonnethouse. org/fort-lauderdale-tour. of days of ‘Oh boy,’ and it yielded something even more wonderful.”
Duhamel had been on Moore’s shortlist and had also been friendly with Lopez for years.
“He’s an incredibly handsome 1940s movie star who’s not afraid to look vulnerable and silly,” Moore said. Duhamel and Lopez spoke over Zoom and decided it was a go.
“You really do need a certain kind of chemistry,” Lopez said. “This was not just romantic-comedy chemistry. It’s more, you know, trusting each other and doing actions and doing stunts and also broad comedy. It was a lot.”
“It was so much better than I even imagined,” Lopez added. “We were just like right on the same wavelength.”
Coolidge also approved. “They’re so fun to look at,” Coolidge said. “You know, you want to see everything ... you want to see them get together. You’re attracted to both people, and then you watch them, you know, be attracted to each other.”
But of course pirates get in the way of some of that, and also promptly force the wedding guests to stand in a pool as their hostages while they try to find the fighting bride and groom. It was a lot of time partially submerged in water with about a dozen other people.
“I’m probably not supposed to say, but we didn’t change the water the whole time we were shooting,” said Coolidge.
D’Arcy Carden, who plays Marin’s new-agey and much younger girlfriend, said those 20 some days were a little humbling.
Marin and Steve Coulter, who played Coolidge’s husband, would even sometimes take naps in their soaking wet suits next to one another, of which Carden says she has photographic proof.
But aside from soggy shoes for two weeks, Carden said it was “as dreamy a situation as you could be in.”
Much of the cast even lived together in a giant house and would go out together most nights, which translated into a family-like atmosphere on set.
“It was like this weird sort of movie dorm,” Duhamel said. “But with a
IF YOU GO spa and a hot tub and a pool and a beach.”
Lenny Kravitz, as Darcy’s ex-boyfriend, even flies in (in a helicopter) to disrupt things.
“He’s an amplified sort of ridiculous version of, you know, a tiny part of what people think I am,” said Kravitz, a longtime friend of Lopez’s.
Moore wanted to make sure that the film looked “big and James Bond and lux. Sometimes action rom-coms can look kind of small.”
And all were impressed by Lopez, who doesn’t act the “movie star” part on set. During a day filming scenes on a small boat in the open water, Lopez went into producer mode and decided they didn’t need an extra boat for her makeup person to be out there with them. She could do her makeup herself. And she nailed it, Moore said.
“She is a mogul and a producer and a storyteller, an actress, a singer and a brilliant physical comedienne,” Moore said. “She’s got discipline, and she’s got artistic finesse, which is a wonderful combo. She really can do everything.”