Twilight Man: Love and Ruin in the Shadows of Hollywood and the Clark Empire

An unearthed family secret prompts an investigation into the closeted life of a 1920s Hollywood millionaire in this deeply researched yet sluggish debut biography from journalist Brown. After uncovering evidence that her grandmother’s uncle, L.A. Philharmonic founder William Andrews Clark Jr., had a longtime male lover named Harrison Post, Brown set out to “recuperate a lost gay history as a way to assert my own queer lineage.” She describes Clark’s background as the son of a Montana senator and copper tycoon and Post’s Jewish heritage and exotic good looks (“shades of Rudolph Valentino”). They met when Post waited on the older, wealthier man at a luxury boutique store in San Francisco. First taken in as “a ward,” Post later became Clark’s “secretary.” (“You could enter a higher class, it seemed, by catering to it,” Brown writes.) Post lived as a kept man surrounded by an “aura of wealth and intrigue,” and inherited a small fortune after Clark’s death, though he descended into alcoholism amid numerous personal and family troubles. Brown has clearly done her homework, but the romance largely happens off the page, resulting in more facts than feelings. This well-intentioned effort has flashes of inspiration but never takes off. (May)