Whether it involved buying gold-gilded carriages or Rolls Royce Silver Seraphs, rich Angelenos have a long history of indulgence.
Oil magnate Edward Doheny spent the exorbitant sum of $4 million in 1927 to build Greystone Mansion for his son and his family. The 55-room home was built on 415 acres in Beverly Hills.
Thirteen years earlier, Chicago chewing-gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. built an Italian Renaissance mansion as a winter home in Pasadena. It stood on a stretch of extravagant homes along Orange Grove Boulevard known as Millionaires Row, and now serves as headquarters for the Tournament of Roses.
In later years, as more tycoons settled in L.A., Frank Lloyd Wright built the neo-Mayan Hollycock house in East Hollywood and Austrian Richard Neutra crafted the streamlined Lovell house in Los Feliz.
“From industrialists to movie stars, Los Angeles was a mecca of money, and when you got rich, you were really rich. Most purchases required insignificant amounts of money. So the wealthy couldn’t spend it fast enough and poured vast sums into real estate,” said Marc Wanamaker, a Los Angeles historian and owner of Bison Archives, which houses entertainment-industry photographs and information.
Like the rest of the nation, Los Angeles welcomed the start of the first great consumer binge during the “Gilded Age” at the turn of the century. Excesses at the time prompted social historian Thorstein Veblen to coin the phrase “conspicuous consumption.”
A typical millionaire’s household contained a housekeeper, butler, four parlor and chamber maids, a chef, two sous chefs, two scullions and servants for the servants.
Among other things, the help assisted wealthy women in donning trailing skirts, wide, blowy hats laden with giant silk roses, gloves and white lacy parasols. Men also conformed to rigid fashion tastes by wearing stiff collars and cuffs, Prince Albert coats and plaid trousers.
As Veblen wrote in “The Theory of the Leisure Class,” the intent was to show “the wearer could not put forth any useful effort.”
But with the advent of women’s suffrage, clothes became less cumbersome and the rich lost some sense of separation from the rest of society. Eventually, department stores began carrying posh, off-the-rack apparel, changing the habits of rich women who traveled twice a year to Paris to visit the top couturiers.
In 1929, Bullocks Wilshire opened on the site of what had been a bean field. Regarded by some historians as the nation’s first suburban department store, it was a showcase of the Art Deco architectural style of the 1920s.
Making elegant clothes available to the masses helped bring an end to the days when the rich were identifiable by what they wore.
Over the years, indulgence became an art form in Hollywood, where the favorite haunts for stars and filmmakers included the Beverly Hills Hotel (built in 1912) and the Ambassador Hotel, which opened in 1921 at a cost of $5 million. Its posh Coconut Grove ballroom regularly attracted such socialites as the Doheny and Hancock families. Jean Harlow held her wedding reception there.
When they weren’t hanging out in L.A., stars flocked to Palm Springs and transformed the sleepy community into a dazzling desert retreat filled with expensive hotels and homes. Denizens included Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Bette Davis, Cary Grant and Lucille Ball.
Many Palm Springs visitors cavorted at the Racquet Club owned by actors Ralph Bellamy and Charles Farrell. Elizabeth Taylor liked to lunch there with her third husband, Mike Todd.
Throughout the century, luxury automobiles have never lost their appeal in car-crazy L.A. Luxury cars were the rage after World War I and the market seldom slowed (except during the Depression and World War II).
“The studios encouraged (stars) to indulge in these kinds of things,” said Leslie Kendall, curatorial manager for the Petersen Automotive Museum. “It was good for their image and helped the studio sell tickets. Nothing exemplified glamour more than a custom-built car.”
Often, stars had a stable of luxury vehicles. Clark Gable would chauffeur his lady friends in his Jaguar XK-120, Mercedes Benz 300S and 1936 Jensen Ford. He also owned two Duesenbergs.
“In an era of $500 cars, these could cost $12,000,” Kendall said. “They cost the Earth.”
