A Bellosguardo Affair

I was last at Bellosguardo, the 24-acre oceanfront estate owned by the late copper heiress Huguette Clark, who died in 2011 at the age of 104, for a megabuck fundraising gala five years ago, so it was nice to return to the magnificent aerie when the Bellosguardo Foundation, with assistance from the Santa Barbara Historical Museum, hosted a lecture by Harvard Law School graduate Liz Brown on her fascinating tome Twilight Man: Love and Ruin in the Shadows of Hollywood and the Clark Empire.

Brown, a relative of the family, spent more than a decade researching the book, which she describes as “a history of power, corruption, greed, and betrayal.”

She discovered a long-lost photograph of Harrison Post, a gay companion of her great-grand uncle William Andrews Clark Jr., an heir to the Montana mining fortune, who founded the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the Hollywood Bowl.

On his death in 1934, Clark left Post a substantial bequest in his will, more than four million dollars in today’s money, which was somehow purloined by Post’s “treacherous” sister, with later chapters covering time spent in a Nazi prison and a Mexico City nightclub.

“I never met Huguette although I could have,” says Brown, who practiced law in Boston, San Francisco, and London. “I regret that now as a missed opportunity.”

She is now working on another novel involving another relative.

Among the 85 guests turning out for the enchanting sunset soirée were the foundation’s president, Jeremy Lindaman, museum Executive Director Dacia Harwood, Montecito Journal historian Hattie Beresford, radio host Catherine Remak, and Santa Barbara Revels founder Susan Keller.

It’s nice to see the estate opening more to the public with more talks and lectures planned…