Hearst and Marion
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HEARST AND MARION THE SANTA MONICA CONNECTION BY TAYLOR COFFMAN PUBLICATIONS IN HEARST STUDIES 2010 Copyright © 2010 by Taylor Coffman All Rights Reserved [email protected] Contents Acknowledgments v Foreword viii Introduction x 1. Beginnings, Precedents, Patterns 1 2. Ladies First, 1925–1928 19 3. Ledger Domain and Other Spheres, 1928–1930 60 4. Home Sweet home, 1931 108 5. Shell Game at the Seashore, 1932–1936 142 6. We Three Kings of 415, 1936–1938 179 7. Playing It Fast and Luce, 1938–1939 224 8. Absentee Hollywoodians, 1939 272 9. Better Gone with the Wind, 1940 310 10. The Unknown Hearst and Marion, 1941 359 11. Queen of the State Guard, 1942 414 12. The Way to Solvency, 1942–1944 470 13. Buyer's Market, 1945–1947 517 Appendix I Julia Morgan's Distribution of Expenses Sheets, 1924–1940 533 Appendix II Julia Morgan's Ledgers for the Beach House and Other Hearst-related jobs in Greater Los Angeles, 1925–1939 563 Appendix III Inventory of 415 Palisades Beach Road, Santa Monica, 1938 616 Appendix IV Santa Monica City Directory for Palisades Beach Road, 1947–1948 620 Appendix V The Beach House-Ocean House and the Press, 1947–1960 623 Appendix VI George S. Merritt to W. A. Swanberg, 1959 (1961) 638 Acknowledgments When you work as a guide at Hearst Castle, San Simeon, as I did for eleven years, mostly in the 1970s, your curiosity is limited only by your ability to satisfy it. Fascination leads to knowledge—and the knowledge gained leads in turn to more fascination. Such is the dynamic nature of Hearstiana, as we devotees call it, the vehicles of history that are San Simeon and William Randolph Hearst; and where Hearst and Marion: The Santa Monica Connection is concerned, the vehicle that is Julia Morgan as well. The most far-reaching boost I received in my pursuit of these subjects came in 1977, when I met Julia Morgan’s goddaughter Lynn Forney, now Lynn Forney McMurray; I also met Lynn’s mother, Lilian Forney, who’d been Miss Morgan’s secretary from the early 1920s until Morgan died in 1957. Through Lynn and her mother, I gained access to private records that, in most instances, the public still hasn’t seen. I’m beyond merely thankful to Lynn—more like bountifully grateful to her—for letting me publish key items in the appendices of this book on the Hearst-Davies house in Santa Monica. A decade after I met Lynn Forney, I fell in with a man whose enthusiasm and support put a whole new spin on my research. Bill Loorz, the second son of George Loorz, was born in 1928, the year his father finished a stint in Santa Monica as construction superintendent for W. R. Hearst, Marion Davies, and Julia Morgan. A Santa Monica connection has been thematic and inspirational in my work ever since, for a good twenty years now. For nearly half that long, William R. Hearst III and his wife Margaret have sponsored my efforts, much as Will’s parents did for several years in the 1980s. There would be no book about the Santa Monica Beach House without Will and Margaret’s support, which they vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS have always rendered with the utmost flexibility and trust in my knack for taking what seemed the best course in any research situation. In part, what needed doing was to put Hearst and Marion and, again, Julia Morgan and still others like George Loorz on a map that not only featured San Simeon but that also included Santa Monica. Louis Pizzitola’s book of 2002, Hearst Over Hollywood: Power, Passion, and Propaganda in the Movies, brought more focus to my theme of Hearst and Miss Davies in greater Los Angeles than Lou may know; it’s high time I saluted him for the direction his work gave mine, no matter how obliquely it did. Dennis Judd of Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, who greatly admires the road I’ve taken from Hearst Castle guide to independent scholar, is someone I need to thank especially: if not for Dennis and his drawing me out and giving me audience in a long interview we conducted in 2008, I wouldn’t have determined soon afterward to embark on this book in the way I did. My research and editorial colleagues on this project—Joanne Aasen, Jacqueline Braitman, Sandra Heinemann, Michael Yakaitis, Vanda Krefft, John Porter, Mary-Ellen Lewis, Ron Linebarger, Bill Berkson, Glen Howell, and John Dunlap, Jr.—deserve heartfelt thanks, especially Joanne Aasen, whose design and auditing skills were unsurpassed in creating an electronic format for the book; indeed, without Joanne’s expertise, Hearst and Marion wouldn’t have been transformed so fluidly into the Internet site it commands today. My colleagues and others at Hearst San Simeon State Historical Monument (Hearst Castle), San Simeon, also deserve my thanks; so do those at The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley; in Special Collections at the Kennedy Library, Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo; at the Oregon Historical Society in Portland, Oregon; at the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills; at ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii the Providence Public Library in Providence, Rhode Island; and at the City of Santa Monica, which oversees the new Annenberg Community Beach House. My wife, Janis, coincidentally a former Santa Monican, deserves all the thanks and praise I can muster for having stood by patiently while I’ve followed my muse, first to San Simeon, then to Wyntoon (vicariously, for I’ve never been there in person), and then back to the Southland and Santa Monica, from which locales I sprang in my youth. To all of you that I’ve mentioned here, profuse thanks once more. I hope you’ll find the waiting and the watching to have been worthwhile. — TAYLOR COFFMAN FALL 2010 Foreword I met Taylor Coffman at Hearst Castle in 1972, and I immediately noticed two things about him: when he talked about anything, he was thorough, and he was accurate. Hearst and Marion: The Santa Monica Connection, the book you’re about to read, is certainly thorough; and although I’m not a Hearst scholar, I’ll bet you anything it’s also pretty darned accurate (or in Taylor’s words, “accurate within human reason, which by its very nature is fallible”). Here’s a typical passage from his new book: How do we know, really know, that work started in Santa Monica by 1926? The question is put that way in deference to those favoring 1927 or even 1928. There’s no need to dwell on what Fred Lawrence Guiles said in 1972 . Nor do we need to cite other secondary sources beyond the Miriam Cooper or even the Irene Mayer Selznick level to drive home the point that 1926 is a date we can trust. Taylor’s thoroughness reminds me of what George Orwell says about Charles Dickens’s prose: “It is futile to object that this kind of thing is rococo—one might as well make the same objection to a wedding cake. Either you like it or you do not like it.” Whether or not you like Taylor’s thoroughness, you’ll have to admit that his book is accurate—again, “within human reason.” His book is unquestionably enchanting, filled with wonderful descriptions like “play the penguin” for “dress formally” and, about the construction of the Beach House, “built to the best Hollywood studio, false-front standards.” It’s also enlightening. For example, in it we learn that Hearst detested the Three Stooges, that he discouraged publicity of Orson Welles (“If we print anything bad about him it will be attributed to hostility, and if we print anything good about him, it FOREWORD ix will be a lie”), and that he may well have saved his empire by writing the column “In the News” in the early 1940s. There is much, much more: Dobermans provided security at the Beach House; Marion was a master quilter, a patroness of more than one hundred thousand children, and a charming woman (in a thank- you note, she wrote, “I hope you are as happy as you have made us”); in 1947–48, after Hearst and Marion had sold the Beach House to Joseph Drown, who renamed it Ocean House, Orson Welles stayed in it; and on and on and on. After I’d read an earlier version of the work, then called 415 Ocean Front, Santa Monica: The Grand Mansion That Was, I congratulated Taylor for having written two magnificent books—one about the grand mansion, and the other about Hearst and Marion and the times they had in many places. In Hearst and Marion: The Santa Monica Connection, whose new title Taylor came up with, he has united those two books. To Taylor and to Joanne Aasen, who has produced a beautiful electronic version of the work, I want to say what Marion often said to those who had done great things for Hearst and her: "Millions of thanks." — JOHN PORTER Hearst Castle Guide Introduction THE TITLE HEARST AND MARION: The Santa Monica Connection has been carefully chosen. The Hearst and Marion part identifies the two principals in our story. Hearst was of course William Randolph Hearst; Marion was Marion Davies. Why the last name for him but only the first name for her? Because that’s how this couple is most widely known today. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. When at Hearst Castle, San Simeon, speak as the guides have spoken for many years, as in “Hearst and Marion.” And now at the new Annenberg Community Beach House, Santa Monica, speak as the docents are speaking, as in “Hearst and Marion.” The trend has caught on there; the idiom endures.