When news emerged this week that late Love Story star Ryan O’Neal’s stunning Malibu beach house – with its sweeping views over the Pacific – had been reduced to rubble it marked more than the end of a family home.

The two-story $3.5 million house overlooking La Costa Beach was party central not just to people in Malibu but to everyone in Hollywood. It’s where O’Neal wooed stars like Angelica Houston, Ursula Andress, Diana Ross, Joan Collins and the great love of his life, Charlie’s Angels actress Farrah Fawcett.

O’Neal’s son, actor and sportscaster Patrick O’Neal, 66, broke the news on Monday that the house – at 21368 Pacific Coast Highway – had been lost in the Pacific Palisades wildfire, still burning out of control. The blaze is just one of five in and around LA that have 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁ed at least two dozen people, destroyed more than 12,000 homes, schools and businesses, and forced more than 100,000 to evacuate.

Patrick posted videos and images of himself going through the rubble of his famous father’s home on Instagram. He included an uplifting photograph of a rainbow over the still-smoldering wreckage. Understandably upset, Patrick said: ‘It’s truly devastating to have grown up here in Malibu and to just now have seen that our family house is gone.’

Griffin would later accidentally 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 his best friend, Gian-Carlo Coppola (son of Godfather legend Francis Ford Coppola) in a boating accident in 1986.