Twilight Man: Love and Ruin in the Shadows of Hollywood and the Clark Empire, by Liz Brown

One day, following her grandmother’s death, in a drawer in her grandmother’s home, Liz Brown came across a photograph of a romantic-looking young man staring Valentino-like into the camera. She didn’t recognize the man and questions to relatives hinted at a buried and unseemly past. Her investigation of the man’s identity and his relationship to her family, became the basis of this book. She uncovered a world of ambition, corruption, obscene wealth, generous philanthropy, closeted homosexuality, Jazz-age Hollywood, World War II Europe, betrayal by a sister of a brother, and enduring love. It’s quite a story, thoroughly researched, and well-told.

The story begins with William Andrews Clark, Sr. known as W.A. and called the “Copper King.” W.A. made a fortune in mining in Butte, Montana, first by supplying the miners, and then buying the mines and railroads himself. At the dawn of the electrical age, W.A. supplied the country’s sudden demand for copper wires and copper filaments. (This reminded me of Tchaikovsky‘s patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, whose engineer husband made a fortune by buying into railroads just as that industry was exploding). W.A.’s empire expanded out of Montana into Nevada (Clark County, home of Las Vegas) and Arizona (Clarkdale, between Prescott and Flagstaff), as well as owning homes in Manhattan, Paris, and Santa Barbara. In the midst of the gilded age when there were few regulatory, environmental, or moral limits on what an ambitious person could amass for themselves, Clark created a fortune. Profligately corrupt, he finally succeeded, after three attempts, in buying himself a Montana Senate seat and served one term. He died in 1925.

Perhaps Liz Clark was thinking of some other more recent wealthy man toying with politics to fulfill a personal ambition when she wrote this paragraph about W.A. Clark:

“The Copper King’s death marked the end of one of the nation’s most lucrative and corrupt careers, in an era defined by lucre and corruption. W.A. built Montana, ravaged the land for its resources, and degraded its political system to control the profits. After all the cash-stuffed envelopes had been delivered, all the checks written, all the mortgages paid for, all the drinks and all the men bought, and all the humiliation he endured to get his seat in the Capitol building, once there he did very little. He’d gotten his long-craved coronation, but he had no interest in governance–crafting laws, representing constituents, or serving the public. He protected his own interests. He fought to open Indian reservations for sale and development and to expand homesteading initiatives. He opposed President Roosevelt’s efforts at conservation. The land–its forests, rivers, bedrock, veined batholiths–was the source of his capital. To W.A., any boundary around what he could take was a shackle.” (p. 149)

W.A.’s children inherited massive wealth but only his first son, Charlie, worked to increase it. The rest, including Will Jr., born in 1877, worked to spend it. After a childhood spent in Europe and Montana, Will Jr., graduated with a law degree from the University of Virginia and returned to Butte. He married in 1901, had a child the following year, William Andrews Clark, III, nicknamed Tertius, and then his wife died a month later of sepsis. He married again, in 1907, to a woman named Alice McManus and with her moved to Los Angeles, though he still regularly traveled to Europe and nearly every summer to a family lodge outside Butte. In Los Angeles, he bought a home in the West Adams neighborhood, eventually purchasing the entire city block with room for grounds and a separate library building to house his collection of rare books. He specialized in English literature and history with a special interest in materials related to Oscar Wilde. Will and Alice had no children together but helped to support a niece of Alice’s. That niece was Liz Brown’s grandmother. When Will Jr. died he left $10,000 to the niece which she then used to purchase the home in San Francisco where Ms. Brown would eventually find the photograph of the mysterious man.

The man in the photograph is Harrison Post, the “Twilight Man” of the book’s title, using a slang-term for a homosexual, as was Harrison Post, but doubly appropriate for a shadowy figure at the edge of other more famous lives. He was born Albert Weis Harrison in a boarding house in New York, in 1897 although that date isn’t certain. Albert’s father was a traveling salesman, but more traveling than sales, and disapproved of by his wife’s parents, so Albert spent an itinerant childhood in several cities throughout New England. His parents divorced and Albert lived with his father either alone or with one sister, Gladys. Eventually Albert and his father lived in San Francisco. Albert spent an unhappy year in a military school. He attempted suicide. His father died. Albert changed his name to Harrison Post. In 1919, Harrison was working in a San Francisco boutique when Will Clark Jr. entered the store. They made a romantic connection and Will brought Harrison to Los Angeles.

Will’s second wife, Alice, had died the year before. 1919 was also the year that Will founded the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Will played the violin as a child and had a lifelong love for music. For the next fifteen years, until his death, Will financially supported the orchestra almost single-handedly. He also provided the funding for the development of the Hollywood Bowl. Harrison did a little work with Will’s book collection, transcribing letters between Oscar Wilde and Alfred Lord Douglas. When Will built the library building on the grounds of his home in 1926, Harrison was given the job of designing the interior. Harrison lived in Will’s home, although Will built a separate home, ostensibly for Harrison, across the street.

In Los Angeles, in the first half of the twentieth century, to be outed as homosexual would cause scandal, and possibly jail time and personal ruin. Will’s wealth and his philanthropy protected both Harrison and himself against pressure from Will’s family and from a business associate who filed a lawsuit for libel against Will when Will fired him. (That business associate, William Daniel Mangam, called, “Buck” published a book in 1939 called, The Clarks: An American Phenomenon, which is a major though suspect source for much of Ms. Brown’s book). Harrison and Will shared a box at symphony concerts, hosted wild parties on the walled-in grounds of Will’s home, and lived the life of Hollywood and wealth. The photograph, saved by Will’s niece, was a headshot taken for Harrison’s foray into the film business, never followed-through on. Ms. Brown found Harrison’s address book and it includes Hollywood’s biggest names: Greta Garbo, Mary Pickford, Norma Shearer, and many others. Salka Viertel‘s name is also in his address book, another person who is better known for the people they surrounded themselves with than for themselves.

Eventually the romance between Will and Harrison cooled but their friendship did not. In 1931, Harrison traded his home across the street from Will’s for a thirteen acre estate in the Pacific Palisades (just east of Salka Viertel’s Santa Monica Canyon home). Harrison’s property adjoined the Riviera Country Club and he enjoyed watching the polo matches and stabled horses of his own. Will and Harrison were members of several clubs in Los Angeles, including the Los Angeles Athletic Club (where my husband and I are members). Members of the Athletic Club had founded the Riviera Country Club in 1926 so that may have been part of the attraction for Harrison to live nearby. And, via the Athletic Club, Harrison joined another club founded by Harry Marston Haldeman (grandfather of the Watergate conspirator) called The Lofty and Exalted Order of Uplifters. The club was named by club member L. Frank Baum, author of the Oz books. This was a mens-only club designed to facilitate drinking parties during prohibition. When the atmosphere got too sensitive to drink at the Athletic Club’s building in downtown Los Angeles, the Uplifters bought a ranch in the Pacific Palisades (just west of the Riviera County Club), built a clubhouse, and then invited club members to build their own lodges on land leased from the club. That ranch was eventually sold to the County of Los Angeles and became Rustic Canyon Park. The original club house became the park’s rec-center building. When I was a child in Santa Monica I took swimming lessons in that park’s pool. The lodges built by the club members became private homes on the surrounding Haldeman and Latimer Roads.

Will Jr. died in 1934 at the age of 57; he had a heart attack while on summer vacation at the family lodge outside Butte. Will Jr. bequeathed his library to UCLA. The UCLA Center for 17th and 18th Century Studies still operates the library today for research and public tours. Will’s home and other buildings on the property have been demolished. Will is buried in a tomb sitting on a little island in the midst of a false lake in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. He joined the remains of his two wives and his son, Tertius, who died in a plane crash in 1932, two years before his father’s death.

Here, Harrison’s story and Liz Brown’s book take a strange twist. At the time of Will’s death, Harrison was confined to a sanitarium. A few years earlier he had been struck with ptomaine poisoning at a luncheon at the Riveria Country Club that also affected 36 others. Harrison experienced lingering physical and mental health affects, although that could also be a result of his compulsive smoking and drinking. In any case, while he was incapacitated, Harrison’s sister, Gladys, had herself appointed as Harrison’s legal guardian.

Harrison owned his property in the Pacific Palisades, and Will had also left him money, both an annual stipend and a trust. Gladys moved Harrison out of the sanitarium and into his home and set him up with private care under Gladys’ control. She and her husband also moved in. Harrison spent nearly four years under Gladys’ manipulative care before he could recover sufficiently to re-assume legal control of his own affairs. In the mean-time Gladys had sold many of his belongings (his horses, his own book collection) and liquidated the trust. In 1938, Harrison, befriended by a male Norwegian nurse that had been working for him (also gay) sailed to Norway to continue his recovery.

But he picked a bad time to be in Europe. The war began. Harrison became stuck in Europe and cut-off from communication with the United States. Harrison spent the first years of the war in a small village in Norway with his friend. He weathered the initial German occupation, but as the war continued the danger increased. Eventually Harrison was sent to a prison in Norway and then to a prisoner of war camp in Germany.

At the end of the war Harrison returned to Norway and re-established contact with the United States. He learned from his lawyer that his sister, Gladys, and her husband had sold the rest of Harrison’s property and moved to Mexico City. Harrison and his Norwegian nurse-friend returned to the U.S. to attempt to recover what money they could from his sister. Harrison’s lawyer arranged a fruitless trip to Mexico City. Harrison met his sister but she claimed to owe him nothing. He returned to the U.S. and moved in with an old friend in San Francisco. The lawyers obtained an extradition order for Gladys and her husband to appear in U.S. Court. They missed the first court date. While waiting for the rescheduled court-date, Harrison died, in 1946.

It’s a fascinating story. The work it must have taken Ms. Brown to uncover so much detail about a person who is mostly not a well-known or public figure is extraordinary. She lists numerous articles, books, and documents for nearly all of her book’s chapters and an extensive bibliography. She also seems admirably careful to mark the places where facts turn to speculation. And I appreciated her notice of and sensitivity to the necessity of gay men like Harrison, and perhaps Will, to live hidden lives.

For me, the book was filled with personal connections, which made it fun. Not only all of the Los Angeles connections: the LA Phil, the Athletic Club, Salka Viertel who I was just reading about, but my oldest brother has lived in Butte for the last few years. My husband and I visited my brother in Butte two years ago and I looked down into the mining operations formerly owned by W.A. Clark. having no idea that some of the money pulled out of that pit long ago funded the philharmonic orchestra back in Los Angeles. Will Clark Jr.’s Los Angeles office was in the Van Nuys hotel, across the street from my apartment.

There’s another fascinating connection to the Clark family story, briefly mentioned by Liz Brown. W.A. Clark Sr. was married twice. Will Jr. is the youngest surviving son of W.A.’s first wife. That wife died in 1893. W.A. then married Anna, a woman that he had raised as a “ward” since she was a girl. (Anna was born in 1878 making her 39 years younger than W.A. and a year younger than Will Jr.) They married in 1901 and had two children, Andree, born in 1902 who died of meningitis in 1919, and Huguette, born in 1906 who died in 2011 just shy of her 105th birthday. Shortly before W.A. died, in 1925, he had bought an estate on the Pacific coast in Santa Barbara called, Bellosguardo. In 1928, Huguette was married at Bellosguardo. She and her husband were separated the next year and divorced the year after that. During the Depression, Huguette and her mother had the original house torn down and built another. They mostly lived in Manhattan (and owned another estate in Connecticut) and last visited Bellosguardo in 1951. When Anna died in 1963 Huguette became the sole owner of Bellosguardo and though she never visited the estate again she left instructions that Bellosguardo should be maintained in pristine condition, and it was, though entirely unoccupied except for the staff, for the next 50 years. Huguette, meanwhile, lived reclusively in a palatial Manhattan apartment (two full floors in a building on the upper west side) until 1991 when she went to the hospital to have surgery to remove some skin cancer lesions from her face. She recovered completely but lived in her hospital room for the rest of her life, being treated and entertained by private medical personnel and other staff. She moved rooms once when the hospital she was in merged with another. Her room overlooked Central Park. She paid nearly a thousand dollars a day for her room and gave generous gifts to the people that waited on her. Her story is told in a 2013 book: Empty Mansions, by Bill Dedman. If all of this sounds like the script for a Ryan Murphy production you should know that Ryan Murphy owns the film rights. I hope he includes Will Clark Jr. and Harrison Post’s story as well.

Bellosguardo, by the way, is now owned by a private foundation with plans to turn the estate into an arts venue for exhibitions and concerts. I hope I’ll get to visit it someday.