Initially, the Sturges house had a string of occupants with scholarly credentials. Sturges was a Lockheed engineer and chess afficiondo, Edward Lorenz was a chaos theory pioneer and coined the term "butterfly effect".  Paul Garvin and Madeleine Mathiot were leading linguistic scholars.  Bridges and Larson's guests included literary intellecatuals such as Gore Vidal and Christopher Isherwood, and of course, many of their Hollwood friends.