the famous newspaper magnate lived with his mistress, actress Marion Davies. 18 There was nothing quite like it. Acres of well-manicured grounds surrounded an enormous main castle, three guest villas, swimming pools, tennis courts, a working cattle ranch, horse stables, and a variety of wonderland attractions. Though theoretically a guest of Marion Davies’s, Louise was really a favorite of the self-styled Young Degenerates—a motley group of teenagers and twentysomethings anchored by Pepi Lederer, Davies’s seventeen-year-old niece. Pepi lived off Hearst’s generosity and dedicated most of her time to liquor, women (she was unapologetically gay in an era when it was all but impossible to be out of the closet), and cocaine.
Louise wisely stayed away from the cocaine, but she passed weeks on end at San Simeon, drinking from Hearst’s stockpile of expensive champagne, partying with the Degenerates, and working to circumvent the old man’s strictures against hard liquor.
“The most wondrously magnificent room in the castle was the dining hall,” Louise remembered. “I never entered it without a little shiver of delight. High above our heads, just beneath the ceiling, floated rows of many-colored Sienese racing banners dating from the thirteenth century. In the huge Gothic fireplace between the twoentrance doors, a black stone satyr grinned wickedly through the flames rising from logs propped up against his chest. The refractory table seated forty. Marion and Mr. Hearst sat facing each other in the mottle of the table, with their most important guests seated on either side.” Louise was normally relegated to “the bottom of the table, where [Pepi] ruled.…
“At noon one day,” Louise remembered, “before Marion and Mr. Hearst were onstage, we were swimming in the pool when Pepi learned that a group of Hearst editors solemnly outfitted in dark business suits, was sitting at the table, loaded with bottles of scotch and gin, in the dining room of the Casa del Mar—the second-largest of the three villas surrounding the castle. Pepi organized a chain dance. Ten beautiful girls in wet bathing suits danced round the editors’ table, grabbed a bottle here and there and exited.” One of the stunned newspapermen turned to another and asked, “Does Mr. Hearst know these people are here?”
Louise had slept with women before, but usually in the context of group sex. For good measure, she slept with Pepi. Later in life she’d claim to have had little interest in women, but she never held to a hard and fast rule. Rumor held that she had even had a one-night stand with Greta Garbo. Privately, Louise acknowledged it was true.
If a dangerous flapper was what Paramount wanted, a dangerous flapper was what it got. The studio was pushing the envelope, and it had found just the right woman to play the part.
Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, with daughter Scottie, on a Paris street in the mid-1920s.
C ONCLUSION U NAFFORDABLE E XCESS
O N OCTOBER 29, 1929—Black Tuesday—the stock market collapsed and America’s Jazz Age was officially over. So long to “I Love College Girls” and “The Sheik of Araby.” Hello to “Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?”
In fact, the stock market crash had little to do with the onset of the Great Depression. Very few Americans in the 1920s owned stocks or securities. Certainly the crash helped provoke the collapse of the nation’s banking system a year or so later. And with bank failures came a rash of personal bankruptcies and evictions. But the banks were bound to fail anyway. They were a slapdash affair—poorly regulated, unevenly capitalized, overextended.
The simple truth was that America’s most prosperous decade had been built on a deck of cards. There was a price to pay for so lopsided a concentration of the nation’s riches. Good times relied on good sales, after all. The same farmers and workers who fueled economic growth early in the decade by purchasing shiny new cars and
Louise wisely stayed away from the cocaine, but she passed weeks on end at San Simeon, drinking from Hearst’s stockpile of expensive champagne, partying with the Degenerates, and working to circumvent the old man’s strictures against hard liquor.
“The most wondrously magnificent room in the castle was the dining hall,” Louise remembered. “I never entered it without a little shiver of delight. High above our heads, just beneath the ceiling, floated rows of many-colored Sienese racing banners dating from the thirteenth century. In the huge Gothic fireplace between the twoentrance doors, a black stone satyr grinned wickedly through the flames rising from logs propped up against his chest. The refractory table seated forty. Marion and Mr. Hearst sat facing each other in the mottle of the table, with their most important guests seated on either side.” Louise was normally relegated to “the bottom of the table, where [Pepi] ruled.…
“At noon one day,” Louise remembered, “before Marion and Mr. Hearst were onstage, we were swimming in the pool when Pepi learned that a group of Hearst editors solemnly outfitted in dark business suits, was sitting at the table, loaded with bottles of scotch and gin, in the dining room of the Casa del Mar—the second-largest of the three villas surrounding the castle. Pepi organized a chain dance. Ten beautiful girls in wet bathing suits danced round the editors’ table, grabbed a bottle here and there and exited.” One of the stunned newspapermen turned to another and asked, “Does Mr. Hearst know these people are here?”
Louise had slept with women before, but usually in the context of group sex. For good measure, she slept with Pepi. Later in life she’d claim to have had little interest in women, but she never held to a hard and fast rule. Rumor held that she had even had a one-night stand with Greta Garbo. Privately, Louise acknowledged it was true.
If a dangerous flapper was what Paramount wanted, a dangerous flapper was what it got. The studio was pushing the envelope, and it had found just the right woman to play the part.
Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, with daughter Scottie, on a Paris street in the mid-1920s.
C ONCLUSION U NAFFORDABLE E XCESS
O N OCTOBER 29, 1929—Black Tuesday—the stock market collapsed and America’s Jazz Age was officially over. So long to “I Love College Girls” and “The Sheik of Araby.” Hello to “Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?”
In fact, the stock market crash had little to do with the onset of the Great Depression. Very few Americans in the 1920s owned stocks or securities. Certainly the crash helped provoke the collapse of the nation’s banking system a year or so later. And with bank failures came a rash of personal bankruptcies and evictions. But the banks were bound to fail anyway. They were a slapdash affair—poorly regulated, unevenly capitalized, overextended.
The simple truth was that America’s most prosperous decade had been built on a deck of cards. There was a price to pay for so lopsided a concentration of the nation’s riches. Good times relied on good sales, after all. The same farmers and workers who fueled economic growth early in the decade by purchasing shiny new cars and
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