Arriving just in time for the rumored opening of Bellosguardo to the public, Liz Brown’s Twilight Man: Love and Ruin in the Shadows of Hollywood and the Clark Empire reveals another interesting aspect of the Clark family story. William Andrews Clark Jr., son of the “copper king” Senator William A. Clark, was an early 20th-century philanthropist of more than usual foresight and vision. It’s largely thanks to the good taste and generosity of this Clark that we have the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Hollywood Bowl, and an extraordinary collection of rare books and manuscripts pertaining to Oscar Wilde. Clark was gay, and openly so, at least for that time, and Twilight Man is the story of Harrison Post, his lover and partner. When Clark died young, Post inherited a substantial fortune as well as a world of trouble, much of it of his own making. Liz Brown’s unstinting research and marvelous writing make this the most thoughtful and enlightening book yet about the Clark empire.
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