The following is a diary entry from Hayes Perkins, an "eccentric vagabond," who was an employee of William Randolph Hearst's San Simeon estate for ten years & kept a diary of the goings on there. This excerpt from the diary was published in a book called Hearst & Marion: The Santa Monica Connection by Taylor Coffman. As Coffman points out, Perkins' diary entries should be taken with a large grain of salt. Is if fact? Is it fiction? Who knows? That being said. The following entry is from February 10th, 1929:
When people get too much money what they get for it is likely to be bad for them. So it is here, for this Hollywood crowd runs to the sensual side of life rather than the spiritual. No regard for the marriage tie, let alone the virtue of a boy or girl. . . .Here's one last tidbit from the same February 1929 diary entry:
All convention is laid aside, from what I see. Broad minded, they call it, but flattened out would express the situation better. I saw Charlie Chaplin and Clara Bow playing out on the tennis court during an interlude in the game. Chaplin wore whites, but Clara was clad in a tiny lappet [garment] less than the naked Shillook women on the [White] Nile wear, with two tinier brassieres, or covers for each shapely breast. Charlie had hold of both of them, being behind her. All the froth and bubble of Hollywood were interested spectators, giving advice in the best and latest movements in cohabiting. They didn’t actually do it [have sex], but wriggled round for ten minutes, much to the delight of the creme-de-la-creme of Hollywood. I’d get ten years if Hearst knew I wrote this, even in my diary. He has just obtained an eight-year sentence for a chap named [Frederic] Girnau in Los Angeles for saying a good deal less [about Clara Bow] than this [an event of 1931, not 1929]. Doubtless Girnau told the truth, but like me he couldn’t prove it.1
There are 265 marble statues in the nude in the marvelous gardens here [an extreme exaggeration]. This is Jim Crowe’s count, for Jim cares for them. For the greater part they are images of women whose limbs and breasts are shapely and seductive. Chaplin caressed the breasts of one of these.
“Come on! Put a little more pep into it! Show some life, some interest!”2
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1Perkins is referring to Frederic Girnau, who was charged with criminal libel and sent to prison for publishing outrageous lies about Clara Bow.
2Charlie did enjoy frolicking with the statues at San Simeon. Here's proof.