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

Praise for

TWILIGHT MAN

In Twilight Man, Liz Brown uncovers a noir fairy tale, a new glimpse into the opulent Gilded Age empire of the Clark family.

Bill Dedman, coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune

Some years ago, Liz Brown opened a drawer at her grandmothers house and found a photograph that led her into a head-spinning real-life film noir: a tale of wealth, greed, corruption, fraud, lies, lust, and every other variation of the seven deadly sins, embodied in a gloriously grotesque cast of characters. Amid the mayhem, the shadowy figure of Harrison Post emerges as a phantom herocharmed at the start, doomed by the end, and, now, resurrected by Browns spectacular, empathetic feat of storytelling. A thoroughly astounding book.

Alex Ross, author of Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music

With a vividness that borders on the uncanny and an insightfulness thats frankly dazzling, Twilight Man offers a striking tale of self-invention, dissolution, empire, and grief. Echoes of Chandler, of Fitzgerald, and of Wilde abound, but in the end Liz Browns utter assurance and her relentless intelligence make this story entirely her own. An essential work of queer, and of California, history.

Matthew Specktor, author of Always Crashing in the Same Car

Twilight Man is a page-turning tale of love, honor, secrets, and deceit. Fortified by meticulous research, with prose both efficient and elegant, Liz Brown takes us on a journey of discovery into family, language, class, and culture. Browns revelations about gay life before Stonewall are enhanced by her keen understanding of the shifting social constructions of identity. Twilight Man is reclaimed historyand a delightfully good read.

William J. Mann, author of Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

Liz Brown reclaims a beguiling lost world of fake countesses, dilettantes, and fantastically wealthy eccentrics who populate this secret history of the love that dare not speak its name set in a Los Angeles you never knew existed. Its a portrait of a covert high society that determinedly erased itself over the decades, and a stunning, poignant personal account of a Lotusland heretofore unexplored.

Matt Tyrnauer, director of Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood

Liz Brown has done extraordinary work of untangling a family mystery that has as much to show us about one family as about the making of the American West. On one level, Twilight Man tells the story of Gilded Age power, wealth, and corruption, and their destructive legacies. On another level, its an intimate portrait of queer life lived in the shadows of family reputation and moral crusades of the early twentieth century. Brown gives us a compelling and beautifully written book about the difficulties of writing queer lives, and the importance of such work in reshaping our sense of the past.

James Polchin, author of Indecent Advances: A Hidden History of True Crime and Prejudice before Stonewall

Drawing on more than a decade and a half of research, Brown tells a riveting, heartbreaking tale of intimate betrayal and unlooked-for generosity, as well as of the unexpected fortitude, capable of surviving even Nazi prisons, of a delicate-looking man with excellent taste. This is a lovely, powerful book, woven together with great narrative skill and told with deep humanity.

Caleb Crain, author of Overthrow

Twilight Man is a peek through the keyhole of history into a scintillating, secretive demimonde filled with gilded mansions, bibliophilic lovers, hush-hush dealings, and tragic twists of fate. Liz Brown probes the previously invisible dark matter of California mythology with a painterly eye for detail and an uncanny ability to read between the lines. This is the queer noir you didnt know you needed.

Claire L. Evans, author of Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet

A darkly glittering story, brilliantly told, Twilight Man is riveting, wise, and superbly researched. Brown weaves together big American lies and forgotten lives, Hollywood self-invention and extractive capitalism, vulnerability and violenceto show that the way we tell history always matters.

Lisa Cohen, author of All We Know: Three Lives

Twilight Man is a richly captivating true-life gay love story, plunging from the intoxicating heights of the Jazz Age into a shady, gripping tale of betrayal and blackmail. Its the history of one of the greatest fortunes ever made and lost, revealing for the first time through queer eyes the seductive links among the worlds of Frank Harris, Edith Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Chandler and the mythical origins of Los Angeles.

Thomas Ads, composer of Powder Her Face and The Exterminating Angel

[An] absorbing debut... A history of power, corruption, greed, and betrayal.

Kirkus Reviews

PENGUIN BOOKS

TWILIGHT MAN

Liz Brown has written for Bookforum, Elle Decor, the London Review of Books, the Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times Book Review. She lives in Los Angeles.

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Copyright 2021 by Liz Brown

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

China Girl: Written by Iggy Pop and David Bowie. Copyright 1977 (renewed) by Bug Music (BMI), EMI Music Publishing Ltd., and Tintoretto Music. All rights for EMI Music Publishing Ltd. in the United States and Canada controlled and administered by Screen Gems-EMI Music Inc. All rights for Tintoretto Music administered by RZO Music. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC.

Just a Gigolo: Words and music by Irving Caesar, Julius Brammer, and Leonello Casucci. Copyright 1930 (renewed) Irving Caesar Music Corp. and Chappell & Co., Inc. All rights for Irving Caesar Music Corp. administered by WC Music Corp. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Alfred Music.

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library of congress cataloging-in-publication data

Names: Brown, Liz, 1971 May 20 author.

Title: Twilight man : love and ruin in the shadows of Hollywood and the Clark empire / Liz Brown.

Description: [New York, New York] : Penguin Books, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020055014 (print) | LCCN 2020055015 (ebook) | ISBN 9780143132905 (paperback) | ISBN 9780698184732 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Post, Harrison. | Clark, William Andrews, 18771934Family. | Gay menUnited StatesBiography. | Gay couplesCaliforniaLos AngelesBiography. | Inheritance and successionCaliforniaLos AngelesHistory20th century. | AmericansForeign countriesBiography. | Los Angeles (Calif.)History20th century.

Classification: LCC HQ75.8.P673 B76 2021 (print) | LCC HQ75.8.P673 (ebook) | DDC 306.76/62092 [B]dc23