West of Eden

by Jean Stein

  Then those neighbors wanted the fence eighteen foot. I made them stop at fifteen, ’cause I was afraid it was going to look like the Great Wall of China back there. They sent me a packet of all kinds of information on mountain lions and their patterns. It’s supposed to be unusual that they would go into a residential area. The gardeners there work seven days a week. They put in the flowers, and then three weeks later they rip out the flowers, and then they put in new flowers. And then they rip out those flowers.

  Our gardeners would often find rattlesnake nests on the property. Once a year when they did the brush clearance, they’d find these nests. And they would fight between themselves for who got to take the rattlers home to eat them.

  —

  GENE BARNETT KERR: I can’t imagine why anybody would want to interview a security guard. When most people look at a security guard all they see is a uniform: they don’t really see a face. A security guard could go home, change, and talk to someone he had talked to only a couple hours before but not be recognized. I don’t know why that is, but I do know it happens.

  Working at Misty Mountain was the easiest job I’d ever had in my entire life, without question. After the house had been sold, the Stein guards got worried. No one knew what was going to become of their jobs. The help inside worried about whether Murdoch would keep them. He could have security if he wanted it. Well, we didn’t know what kind of person he was. You can see how the guards hated to see it end—I know I did. You could walk around outside, be your own boss. I started about a week before Mrs. Stein passed away. I saw her one time on her way down the driveway, and right after that she passed away. I saw her smile just once.

  Nobody had lived there for a while before Murdoch bought the property. I used to wander around up there by the old pool and the bathhouses wondering about all the old Hollywood people who’d been there in the past. I imagine there were quite a few. I think that was the one spot that had some mystique for me. I felt bad when they tore down the pavilion.

  We didn’t work for the studio; we just worked for a security company that had a contract to supply guards to the studio. The studio absorbed the cost. As to what the security company made, I can only guess. Everybody wished they worked for the studio. In fact, I’d never seen so many Hollywood hopefuls in my life as seemed to go through our guard force. I think the agents sent them over to get jobs as guards at the studio so they could get some exposure. A lot of the guards were interested in the movies—or I should say they were interested in Hollywood. I suppose some of them would have been happy with just one word with Mr. Wasserman, or one word from Mr. Stein. Most Hollywood hopefuls will never make it here because they don’t have the right agent or the right contact. They come and go. I’m sure there’s thousands that come and go.

  They say security is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States. More people out here have security guards than I would have thought. Perhaps it has more to do with prestige than security. It seems like our jobs are more about answering the gate and checking people in and out. On my side of town no one can afford security guards. I’ve watched as people in my neighborhood have started leaving their lights on all night, and more and more houses have bars on their windows. That’s what they have to do—they can’t afford to hire security guards or services like on the Westside or in Bel Air. I’m way over in El Monte. I keep having trouble down there: people taking things out of my yard and so forth. They take anything that’s not nailed down. My idea of security might be completely different than yours. I feel like I belong down at my place guarding my own house, not up here in the hills. Nothing ever happens up here.

  BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

  LAUREN BACALL was a film actress. Her movies include To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, and Key Largo. She wrote two autobiographies, By Myself and Now.

  DON BACHARDY is a visual artist. His books of portraits include October (in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood), One Hundred Drawings, Drawings of the Male Nude, Last Drawings of Christopher Isherwood, and Hollywood.

  WARREN BEATTY is an actor and director. His films include Splendor in the Grass, Bonnie and Clyde, Shampoo, Heaven Can Wait, Reds, Dick Tracy, Bugsy, and Bulworth.

  JOAN WILLENS BEERMAN is an analyst. She serves on the California Committee South of Human Rights Watch.

  ANN SMITH BLACK’s aunt was Lucy Smith Doheny.

  LOUIS BLAU was a lawyer.

  MARYANN BONINO is a professor and musicologist and the curator of the Doheny Mansion.

  BETTY BREITHAUPT has served as a secretary to Jules Stein and, later, to Lew Wasserman.

  ROY BREWER was the Hollywood representative of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Motion Picture Machine Operators.

  HARRY JOE “COCO” BROWN, JR., was a childhood friend of Barbara Warner Howard’s.

  CONNIE BRUCK is a New Yorker staff writer and the author of several books, including Predators’ Ball and When Hollywood Had a King.

  GAYLE CHELGREN is the niece of Hugh Plunkett.

  RUTH COGAN was the sister of Jules Stein.

  OSCAR COHEN was an executive producer and president of Associated Booking Corporation.

  BUD CORT is a film and stage actor. He starred in Brewster McCloud and Harold and Maude.

  JOHN CREEL is the founder and CEO of corporations specializing in international marketing, design, and product development. He is the stepson of Robert Plunkett, the brother of Hugh Plunkett.

  MIKE DAVIS is a writer, historian, and political activist. His books include City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster, and Planet of Slums. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1998.

  JOAN DIDION is an essayist and novelist. Her books include Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Play It as It Lays, A Book of Common Prayer, The White Album, Political Fictions, Where I Was From, The Year of Magical Thinking, and Blue Nights.

  BARRY DILLER is the chairman and senior executive of IAC and the chairman and senior executive of Expedia, Inc. He was formerly chairman of Fox, Inc., under Rupert Murdoch.

  CAROLE WELLS DOHENY is an actress. She was married to Edward L. Doheny IV, the great-grandson of Edward L. Doheny.

  PATRICK “NED” DOHENY is a musician and the great-grandson of Edward L. Doheny.

  TOPSY DOHENY is the widow of Timothy Doheny, a son of Edward L. Doheny, Jr.

  BRODRICK DUNLAP is a real estate agent at Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage.

  PHILIP DUNNE was a screenwriter, film director, and producer.

  WILLIAM EGGLESTON is a photographer. His books and portfolios include Los Alamos, Election Eve, William Eggleston’s Graceland, The Democratic Forest, Faulkner’s Mississippi, and Ancient and Modern.

  DAVID “PREACHER” EWING is a writer and occasional filmmaker in California working on a nonfiction book.

  JANE FONDA is a film actress. Her films include Walk on the Wild Side; Barbarella; They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?; Klute; Coming Home; and On Golden Pond. Her books include My Life So Far and Prime Time.

  BEATRIZ FOSTER was a psychiatrist.

  PATRICK FOULK was a close friend of Ann Warner’s.

  DAVID GEFFEN is a philanthropist and art collector. He was a producer and a film studio and record company executive.

  FRANK GEHRY is an architect. His buildings include the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Fondation Louis Vuitton art museum in Paris, and the Pierre Boulez Hall in the Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin.

  HAL GLICKSMAN served as a preparator at the Pasadena Art Museum and later as the director of the Pomona College Museum of Art.

  FABIENNE GUERIN was a friend of Mary Jennifer Selznick’s. She is married to J. P. “Rick” Guerin.

  RICHARD GULLY was the chief of protocol to Jack Warner.

  CHARLES HARRIS was the butler to Jules and Doris Stein.

  BROOKE HAYWARD is the author of Haywire and the daughter of Leland Hayward and Margaret S
ullavan.

  DENNIS HOPPER was a film actor and director. His movies include Easy Rider, The Last Movie, Apocalypse Now, and Blue Velvet.

  MARIN HOPPER is a designer and the daughter of Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward.

  WALTER HOPPS was an art curator, museum director, and art dealer.

  BARBARA WARNER HOWARD is the daughter of Jack and Ann Warner. She serves as the chair of the New York Theatre Workshop board of trustees.

  CY HOWARD was a screenwriter, director, and film producer and the third husband of Barbara Warner Howard.

  JEAN HOWARD was a photographer and the wife of the agent Charles Feldman.

  LYLA HOYT married Warren Hoyt, the first child of Grace Garland.

  MARSHA HUNT has been a film, theater, and television actress.

  JAN IVAL was the butler and chauffeur for Ann Warner.

  JOE JOHNSTON has served as a gardener to Jules Stein and as the landscape consultant at Misty Mountain under Rupert Murdoch’s ownership.

  DEBORAH JOWITT is a dance critic. She was a classmate of Jane Garland’s at Marymount.

  CRAIG KAUFFMAN was a visual artist.

  SALLY KELLERMAN is a film actress. Her movies include M*A*S*H, Brewster McCloud, and Foxes.

  GENE BARNETT KERR was a security guard at Misty Mountain.

  NAOMI KLEIN is a writer and social activist. Her books include No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, and This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. She serves on the board of directors of the climate activist group 350.org.

  RING LARDNER, JR., was a screenwriter, novelist, and journalist. His films include Woman of the Year, Laura, and M*A*S*H. He wrote the novel The Ecstasy of Owen Muir.

  ANSON LISK’s aunt, Lucy Marceline Smith Doheny, was the first wife of Edward L. Doheny, Jr.

  EARL MCGRATH is a man of letters, a former gallery owner, and the former head of Rolling Stones Records.

  ARTHUR MILLER was a playwright, screenwriter, and author. His plays include All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, A View from the Bridge, and After the Fall. His screenplays include The Misfits.

  LOUISE MILLS’s father was Karl Kramer, an executive at MCA.

  ED MOSES is a visual artist. He had a retrospective exhibition at MOCA in 1996.

  JIM MURRAY was an executive at MCA.

  WALLACE NEFF, JR., is the son of the architect Wallace Neff.

  JIM NEWMAN co-founded Syndell Studio in Los Angeles with Walter Hopps and Craig Kauffman.

  LARRY NIVEN is a science fiction writer and the son of Lucy Estelle Doheny (“Dickie Dell”). He is the grandson of Edward L. Doheny, Jr.

  GERALD OPPENHEIMER was the son of Doris Stein from her first marriage.

  GREGORY ORR is the son of Joy and Bill Orr and the grandson of Ann Warner and her first husband, Don Page.

  JOY ORR was the daughter of Ann Warner and her first husband, Don Page.

  ALZOA GARLAND OTTO’s mother was Alzoa Garland, the first wife of William Joseph Garland.

  JACKIE PARK was a close friend of Jack Warner’s.

  ARTHUR PARKS was an executive at MCA.

  THE RIGHT REVEREND WILLIAM PERSELL is a bishop who served as the rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Los Angeles.

  JAMES PETRILLO was the president of the American Federation of Musicians.

  ABRAHAM POLONSKY was a screenwriter, film director, and novelist.

  RICHARD RAYNER is an English writer and historian who has lived in Los Angeles for twenty-five years. His books include The Blue Suit and A Bright and Guilty Place.

  SETH ROSENFELD is the author of Subversives: The FBI’s War on Student Radicals, and Reagan’s Rise to Power. As an independent journalist based in San Francisco, he has written for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Harper’s Magazine.

  LARRAINE ROSNER is the widow of Louis Rosner.

  LOUIS ROSNER was a neurologist and one of Jack Warner’s doctors.

  WILLIAM SCHEETZ is the personal/estate manager for Rupert Murdoch.

  MURRAY SCHUMACH was a journalist at The New York Times for forty-eight years. He also wrote several books, including The Face on the Cutting Room Floor: The Story of Movie and Television Censorship and The Diamond People.

  DANIEL SELZNICK is a producer and the son of David and Irene Selznick.

  FIONA SHAW is a stage and film actress and an opera director. She has starred in many plays, including Medea and The Testament of Mary. She has also directed several operas, including Benjamin Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia for Glyndebourne.

  BETTY WARNER SHEINBAUM is a visual artist and the daughter of Harry and Rea Warner.

  JUDY SIMON is the wife of Donald Simon, Norton Simon’s son from his first marriage.

  TOM SITTON is an author and historian. His books include Grand Ventures: The Banning Family and the Shaping of Southern California.

  STEPHEN SONDHEIM is a composer and lyricist. His work includes West Side Story, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, and Into the Woods.

  HERBERT SORRELL was the head of the Conference of Studio Unions.

  SUSAN SPIVAK is an attorney.

  DAVID STEIN was the younger brother of Jules Stein.

  JULES STEIN was the founder of Music Corporation of America and the Jules Stein Eye Institute.

  DOROTHY STEVENS was Doris Stein’s social secretary.

  NINA AUCHINCLOSS STRAIGHT is a writer and the half sister of Gore Vidal.

  MARTIN SUMMERS is an art dealer and private consultant.

  TOMOYUKI “YUKI” TAKEI is a hairstylist and former salon owner.

  ANNE TERRAIL is the daughter of Barbara Warner Howard and Claude Terrail.

  KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL is the editor and publisher of The Nation and the daughter of Jean Stein.

  WENDY VANDEN HEUVEL is an actress, a teacher, a producer, the director of the nonprofit theater company piece by piece productions, and the daughter of Jean Stein.

  GORE VIDAL was an essayist, novelist, and playwright. He was the author of numerous books, including Julian, Burr, United States: Essays 1952–1992, and Palimpsest: A Memoir.

  AMY WALKER WAGNER is an attorney and the daughter of Michael Walker, Bob Walker’s younger brother.

  BOB WALKER is a photographer and the son of Jennifer Jones and Robert Walker.

  DAWN WALKER is the wife of Bob Walker.

  GILLIAN WALKER is a psychotherapist in private practice and on the psychiatry faculty at NYU Medical School, teaching family and couples therapy.

  JACK WARNER, JR., was a film producer and the son of Jack Warner and his first wife, Irma Solomon.

  LEW WASSERMAN was the former chairman and chief executive of Music Corporation of America and, later, of MCA Universal.

  RICHARD WEISMAN is an art collector. His mother was Marcia Weisman, the sister of Norton Simon.

  STEFANIA PIGNATELLI WERNER is an interior designer.

  ALICE WEXLER is a historian whose books include Mapping Fate: A Memoir of Family, Risk, and Genetic Research and The Woman Who Walked into the Sea: Huntington’s and the Making of a Genetic Disease. She is the daughter of Milton Wexler.

  MILTON WEXLER was an analyst and the founder of the Hereditary Disease Foundation.

  For my daughters,

  Katrina and Wendy

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To Bill Clegg for his editorial advice, and for his friendship and dedication to this book.

  To David Ebershoff, who has been an incredibly caring editor and who has advised me with grace and kindness.

  To the gifted Scottish poet and editor Robin Robertson, with gratitude for his belief in this book.

  To Ed Ruscha, who has always been a gracious friend. He has generously contributed the iconic image on the jacket cover.

  To Ottessa Moshfegh, a brilliant editor who has been involved with every aspect of this book. She is a loyal friend.

  To Webster Younce, to whom I am indebted for his sensitive editing, and fo
r caring deeply about this project.

  To Marie Jager, who was an intrepid and dedicated researcher of unwavering spirit.

  To Mary Blume, Kennedy Fraser, and Fiona Shaw, constant friends whose love and kindness have supported me throughout this project.

  I am especially grateful to the following people for their generosity and advice: Mike Davis, William Eggleston, David “Preacher” Ewing, Dennis Hopper, Walter Hopps, Barbara Howard, Diane Keaton, Brigitte Lacombe, Ed Moses, Richard Rayner, Deborah Treisman, William Vollmann, Bob Walker, and Dawn Walker.

  For their encouragement and support, I wish to thank Hilton Als, Richard Axel, Jack Bankowsky, Cori Bargmann, Peter Bogdanovich, Natasha Parry Brook, Peter Brook, Connie Bruck, Elizabeth Coll, Mary Dean, Angie Dickinson, Joan Didion, Carole Wells Doheny, Brodrick Dunlap, Winston Eggleston, Jodie Evans, Susan Feldman, Harry Gamboa, Jr., Silvia Gaspardo Moro, Gronk, Tom Hayden, Jim Heimann, Willie Herrón III, Marin Hopper, Caroline Huber Hopps, Janet Johnson, Robert “Cyclona” Legorreta, Norman Lloyd, H. W. MacDonald, Earl McGrath, Kristine McKenna, Alessandra Moctezuma, Chon A. Noriega, Ethan Nosowsky, Gail Oppenheimer, Gerald Oppenheimer, Dr. Pratapaditya Pal, Grace Pollak, Karen Ranucci, Michael Ratner, Charles Ray, Danna Ruscha, Mariam Said, Robert Scheer, William Scheetz, Daniel Selznick, Betty Sheinbaum, Stanley Sheinbaum, Sid Sheinberg, Alexandra Shiva, Patssi Valdez, Jataun Valentine, Gillian Walker, Sam Watters, Vivien Lesnik Weisman, Drenka Willen, Barbara Williams, JoAnn Wypijewski, and Narda Zacchino.

  Special credit is due to the valiant transcribers, Ian Hassett and Joanna Parsons.

  I wish to thank David Ebershoff’s colleagues at Random House: Barbara Bachman, Susan Kamil, Beth Pearson, Tom Perry, Robbin Schiff, and Amelia Zalcman, and Caitlin McKenna, to whom I am particularly indebted.