Moving to Los Angeles in the early 1930s, they became part of the Hollywood musical world, Louis playing fiddle and acting as concertmaster in hundreds of classic films, from Gone with the Wind to Psycho.
Shortly after World War II ended, the Kaufmans went to Europe where they stayed off and on for eight years, researching and performing the concerti of Vivaldi.
After return to their home in Westwood, built-in 1935 by Lloyd Wright, they had a brief brush with the FBI, who wondered why they should have been away for so long – this was the McCarthy period.
[2][3][1] At the time of his death, Louis Kaufman left a memoir, which Annette eventually finished – A Fiddler's Tale: How Hollywood and Vivaldi Discovered Me, was published in 2003.
Lifelong collectors of art, she and her husband had acquired the largest private collection extant of Milton Avery paintings, but they avoided works by Louis's boyhood friend and schoolmate Mark Rothko, which were not to their taste.