“Some years ago, Liz Brown opened a drawer at her grandmother’s 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 hero — charmed at the start, doomed by the end, and, now, resurrected by Brown’s spectacular, empathetic feat of storytelling. A thoroughly astounding book.” —Alex Ross
“[An] absorbing debut . . . a history of power, corruption, greed, and betrayal.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Twilight Man is biography, romance, and nonfiction mystery, carrying with it the bite of fiction."—Los Angeles Review of Books
“A Hollywood love story with glitz, greed and the threat of social ruin”—New York Times
ABOUT TWILIGHT MAN
The unbelievable true story of Harrison Post—the enigmatic lover of one of the richest men in 1920s Hollywood—and the battle for a family fortune.
In the booming 1920s, William Andrews Clark Jr. was one of the richest men in Los Angeles. The son of the mining tycoon known as “The Copper King of Montana,” Clark launched the Los Angeles Philharmonic and helped create the Hollywood Bowl. He was also a man with secrets, including a lover named Harrison Post.
A former salesclerk, Post enjoyed a lavish existence among Hollywood elites, but the men’s money—and their homosexuality—made them targets, for the district attorney, their employees and, in Post’s case, his own family. When Clark died suddenly, Post inherited a massive fortune—and a wealth of trouble. From Prohibition-era Hollywood to Nazi prison camps to Mexico City nightclubs, Twilight Man tells the story of an illicit love and the battle over an inheritance that would destroy one man’s life.
In recent years, readers have come to know the remarkable story of Clark’s half-sister Huguette and her contested fortune. Now comes a new history of the same Gilded Age dynasty. Harrison Post was forgotten for decades, but after a chance encounter with his portrait, Liz Brown, Clark’s great-grandniece, set out to learn his story. TWILIGHT MAN is more than a biography. It’s a reckoning with the dark legacy of an American empire and a forgotten man’s quest for home.
EXCERPTS, ET CETERA
“A Secret Gay Love Story in the Shadow of a Gilded Age Fortune,” Daily Beast
“The Half-Truths of Harrison Post: Moneyed Magnate or Jazz Age Grifter,” Lit Hub
Liz Brown’s Virtual Bookshelf at Skylight Books
CONVERSATIONS
Wealth, love and the battle for a family fortune, Nancy’s Bookshelf, NSPR
Whispers & Legacies: A Conversation about the Clarks, the Posts, and the Palés”: a conversation with Bill Dedman (co-author of Empty Mansions), Stephen Gruse (grandson of George Palé), and Sue Lombardi (cousin of Harrison Post), moderated by the Clark Library’s Rebecca Fenning Marschall
With Justine Kurland, Scandinavia House
With Matt Tyrnauer, hosted by Book Soup
With Alex Ross, Skylight Books Podcast Series
With Howard Rodman, hosted by the Country Bookshelf
With Michael Takeuchi of Chaucer’s Books
Cover design: Lynn Buckley