Rivers in the Desert

by Margaret L Davis

  “Let’s go in,” Mulholland said adventurously.

  “Oh no we can’t do that, it wouldn’t be right,” Rose cried, horrified at the idea of entering a house without permission. Over her protestations, Mulholland took her by the hand and went inside.

  As they were looking around upstairs, the owner entered and, not recognizing Mulholland, demanded to know who they were and what they were doing there.

  “What else? We’re looking it over to buy,” Mulholland snapped, “and we like it except for one thing.”

  “What is that?” the man asked, now interested. “Whatever it is it can be fixed.”

  “No, it can’t be fixed,” Mulholland retorted firmly. “It has to be changed completely. I want a straight staircase, not a circular one.”

  The owner looked at Mulholland as if he were crazy. “It’s a beautiful staircase. Why on earth would you want to change it?” the man asked perplexed.

  “It’s obvious. I’m going to live here until I die, and they’re going to have a hard time getting my big body down that narrow staircase,” reasoned Mulholland, forever the engineer, having made the calculations mentally when he had walked up the stairs with Rose.

  Agreeing to the change, the owner asked Mulholland what kind of terms he wanted.

  “Terms? What do you mean by terms?” Mulholland growled. “If I can’t pay cash, I won’t buy the damn thing.”

  Mulholland left a check for fifteen hundred dollars, paid the balance the following morning, and soon moved into the house. But Rose’s high expectations that the bright, sun-filled Victorian house on tree-lined St. Andrew’s Place would bring happiness to her morose and grieving father proved wrong; while he resided in the St. Andrew’s home, Mulholland faced the most difficult and arduous years of his fife.

  ON JUNE 15, 1915, Mulholland’s daughter Lucille accidentally poured oil onto a hot stove and set the home of Mulholland’s sister, in-law, Mrs. L. E. Mitchell, on fire. The blaze spread so rapidly that nothing in the house could be saved. Lucille and her aunt escaped without injury but a trunk of Mulholland’s treasured family keepsakes were destroyed. Mulholland accused Lucille of deliberate carelessness and his anger was reported in the newspapers.

  It was the first public event in a see-saw of interaction between Mulholland and his impetuous, attractive, modern-minded daughter. The destroyed house was covered by insurance, but the sentimental keepsakes, including those of his deceased brother, Hugh, could never be replaced, and it took months before Mulholland could forgive his daughter for her “stupidity.”

  Lucille, Mulholland’s second daughter and fourth child, had already developed a reputation as the irresponsible sister. Rose, the firstborn, was Lucille’s opposite. Her world centered around the approval of her mother and father, and she spent her life in service to them. Rose exhibited a deep-seated dependency on her father which Lucille managed to escape. Even as an adult, Rose was constantly driven to seek her father’s approval and love. Lucille, on the other hand, did pretty much what she pleased, which generated storms of conflict not only with Mulholland but with Rose as well.

  Lucille’s sense of self-esteem was not rooted in her father’s opinion of her actions; she didn’t place much value on her family’s approval, and entangled herself in romantic liaisons that wreaked havoc in the Mulholland household. Mulholland’s successful efforts over the years kept his own private life out of public view, but the actions of the impetuous Lucille put gossip of the Mulholland family on the front pages of Los Angeles newspapers, causing the now-image-conscious Mulholland much stress and embarrassment. Mulholland was a classical patriarch: He had raised his children and demanded their strict conformity and obedience. But the intelligent and mischievous Lucille challenged every conventional notion that Mulholland had attempted to instill in his children about discipline and morality.

  Lucille was a rebellious daredevil, and more socially adept than her brothers and sisters. These traits, coupled with her pretty face and the Mulholland name, caused many men to seek her attentions. Unlike the other children, Lucille was likely to transgress social conventions and break with conformity. She was the family’s free spirit, and had little compunction in divulging family matters to her friends and acquaintances which Mulholland would have preferred to keep hidden.

  Older sister Rose and brother Perry were so anxious to please their father that, in deference to his wishes, they made decisions which would later prove to be detrimental to their own futures. Rose devoted her life to caring for her father and died, at age eighty-six, a childless spinster in her father’s home. Perry gave up a long, wished-for university education to manage the Mulholland ranch in the northwest San Fernando Valley.

  Lucille, in sharp contrast to her siblings, entered into a series of stormy love affairs. A year after her mother’s death, she eloped with Edmund G. Sloan, a roustabout at Standard Oil Company, to the shock of everyone in the Mulholland household. By October 12, 1916, one month and four days following her secret marriage, Lucille, aged twenty, had separated from her husband and returned to her father’s home, pregnant.

  In June 1917, Lucille gave birth to her only child, Lillian E. Sloan, and sought her father’s assistance in obtaining a divorce. Sloan had refused to provide for his wife and child since the couple’s separation, and, charged with “idleness, profligacy, and dissipation,” failed to appear in court.

  According to front-page stories in Los Angeles dailies, the couple’s split occurred when Sloan demanded that Lucille buy him a diamond ring in equal value to the engagement ring he had given her. Since Lucille was pregnant at the time of the marriage, this was probably a poorly hidden demand for reimbursement for the expense of the reluctantly purchased ring. Lucille refused. Sloan then demanded Lucille return the engagement ring he had given her. She did, then abandoned him for good. In a one-day divorce trial in Los Angeles Superior Court in September, Mulholland took the stand and testified that he told his daughter to return the ring, “as we did not care for any remembrance of him.” Mulholland’s imposing, patrician figure dominated the proceedings and Lucille was awarded her divorce, as well as full custody of baby Lillian; the details were read avidly by the citizens of Los Angeles in the morning papers.

  The handsome Sloan proved worthy of the epithet “Cad.” His own mother, Clara S. Sloan of Pasadena, expressed her opinion of him in her will when she left him only ten dollars, stating that he had caused her much “heartache, disgrace, and humiliation.” She instead left her $29,000 estate, including four land parcels in Fresno, Kern, and King’s County, to her granddaughter, Lillian, who inherited it after Mrs. Sloan’s death in August 1950.

  Following the trial and, for once, keeping to the convention of the times, Lucille remained at the Mulholland home and seldom ventured out in public. To be a recent divorcee in 1918 was nothing to be flaunted, even for the daring Lucille. After patiently serving her sentence in the name of decorum, Lucille moved out of her father’s house—and out of his control—to live on her own, leaving Lillian in the care of her former mother-in-law. Lucille went to work for a Pasadena law firm as a secretary where she met Benjamin C. Strang, the area’s presiding justice of the peace. One year after her divorce from Sloan, Lucille wed Judge Strang, age thirty-seven, in a secret wedding at the lavish Pasadena home of Mrs. Waldo Falton. Following the late-night ceremony, the couple moved into a beautifully landscaped bungalow alongside the banks of the Arroyo Seco in Pasadena.

  Strang had cleverly succeeded in having news of their marriage license suppressed, and they were married more than a week before it was made public. The first Mulholland learned of it was when news of the marriage appeared on the front page of the Pasadena Star News on October 30, 1919. In a diplomatic fashion more worthy of a presidential candidate, Mulholland calmly stated to journalists that he knew nothing of the matter at all, yet he wished his daughter and her husband every success and would immediately “send his paternal blessing.” Picking up the event, Los Angeles newspapers, in defer
ence to Mulholland’s position as the leading city father, described Lucille’s personality as “vivacious” and “possessing the independent nature that has made her father one of the great men of the Southwest.”

  While Mulholland may have told reporters he was delighted over his daughter’s marriage, everyone close to him knew that he was less than pleased. The day after the announcement of Lucille’s marriage, the heated Mulholland went to court escorted by his attorney, Lewis E. Whitehead, and filed a petition that he be named legal guardian of his two-year-old granddaughter, Lillian.

  Certainly, the irresponsible Sloan rightfully deserved to be excluded from the Mulholland family as a ne’er-do-well. Lucille’s selection of such a man could be excused as youthful impetuousness, and of course, there had been the pregnancy. But in Strang, Mulholland may have had more disturbing reasons to instigate his removal. Like Mulholland, Strang was a self-made man and successful in his own field of endeavor.

  Benjamin C. Strang was born in Calhoun County, Iowa, where his Quaker father worked as a farmer. Strang was five years old when his family moved to Pasadena. As a child he worked as a newsboy, then during high school worked in the oil fields around Whittier, Los Angeles, and Kern County. Strang took up the study of law in 1912 and specialized in probate. In 1914, he was elected justice of the peace of Pasadena, and was reelected four years later. He was a staunch Republican and active in local politics.

  The fifteen-year age difference that separated Strang and Lucille raised eyebrows. The very notion that an attractive, healthy young lady from a prominent family would involve herself intimately with an older man was distasteful, and unless something was direly lacking in her psychology, unexplainable. Such an alliance could only highlight Mulholland’s failings as a father for his headstrong daughter. Conclusions could be drawn from the May-December romance that Lucille was seeking in Strang what she did not receive from her father—paternal love and understanding.

  To the court, Mulholland swore that his daughter had no means with which to provide for Lillian’s support and that the child was in the caring custody of its grandmother, Clara Sloan. Obviously, the responsibility of motherhood did not suit Lucille well during this young and confused period of her life, and Mulholland, unable to tend to the physical and emotional needs of the baby, proposed that the child remain with Mrs. Sloan; he would provide financially for her. On November 5, 1919, the court appointed him the child’s official guardian. Sadly, Mulholland’s shaky signature on court records attested both to his distress at the disheartening actions of his daughter and to his advancing affliction with Parkinson’s disease.

  On February 12, 1920, Lucille suddenly appeared at the home of Clara Sloan and through “trick and device,” as she was later charged, seized her baby. Clara Sloan immediately called the Pasadena police and charged Lucille and her new husband with kidnapping. With court papers drafted by her husband’s law firm, Lucille avoided arrest and petitioned the court for revocation of Mulholland’s guardianship, claiming that she had never given her consent. A court date was set for March 25.

  News of the impending trial made the front page; predictably, Mulholland was livid. Clara Sloan filed a writ of habeas corpus against Lucille and Strang in an effort to have the child returned. Newspapers reported that the fight between father and daughter had grown ugly and spirited. At noon, March 26, deputy sheriffs armed with a writ of habeas corpus went to the Strang home to retrieve the child. Lucille barricaded herself inside and refused to turn Lillian over to the authorities. Newspapers reported events day by day until March 28, when Mulholland, embarrassed at the notoriety, wearily held a press conference and stated that he did not care to continue to air the family troubles in a public court proceeding, suggesting that he would not continue a strenuous fight against his daughter. On April 1, Judge Strang announced the case would be settled by all parties amicably out of court.

  Mulholland’s public pronouncements of reconciliation were deceptive. Father and daughter continued their heated arguments, until Mulholland managed to coerce Lucille into agreeing that Mulholland could keep Lillian at his St. Andrew’s Place home, and both Lucille and Mrs. Sloan would be permitted rights of visitation. In exchange, Mrs. Sloan would withdraw the pending criminal charges. Four days later, Lucille had Strang deliver Lillian to her grandfather.

  Ten months later, Lucille returned to her father’s home, officially separated from her second husband, and by February 26, brought suit to have her marriage annulled. This time, a reconciled father and daughter, with Mulholland’s attorneys, persuaded the court to exclude the public from the courtroom, and a subdued Lucille testified that her married life with Strang had been unhappy. After others testified on her behalf, Lucille meekly stated that her marriage to Strang “had never been a reality.” Again aided by the dramatic presence of her celebrated father in court, Lucille was granted an annulment on March 27,1921.

  Little is known about the reasons behind Lucille’s breakup with Strang. One explanation is that the stress of the custody battle and the notoriety it generated destroyed much of the romance between the mismatched couple. Strang’s sudden and unwanted fame in the papers may have caused him to consider terminating the marriage, and the constant pressure on Lucille from her father did little to reinforce any bond the lovers had between them.

  Amazingly, less than three months later on Thursday, June 21, 1921, inside Mulholland’s St. Andrew’s Street home, Lucille was given away by her father—this time, with his blessing—to yet another husband, Ronald Robert Mack, a San Francisco stockbroker. Rose served as the maid of honor, and the grooms’ friend, Edgar Stone, served as best man. Only a few intimate friends attended the ceremony. The new couple then moved to Atherton, California, to start a home and to raise four-year-old Lillian.

  Lucille’s notorious affairs proved embarrassing, and her series of short-lived marriages had occurred during Mulholland’s considerably rapid rise to national fame. The image-conscious Mulholland had worked vigorously to keep his personal life completely out of public scrutiny, yet Lucille’s antics forced him to confront her through legal channels. For a man who loathed lawyers and bureaucracy, challenging his own daughter in a Los Angeles courtroom was especially repugnant.

  Many of Lucille’s friends claimed that her escapades were direct retaliations against the stern rule of her famous father; they were attempts to hit him where it would hurt the most—his pride. Another, perhaps truer, point of view was that the men Lucille married reflected key aspects of her father’s complicated personality. In Edmund Sloan, Lucille found the rough-hewn field laborer, stubborn and unsympathetic. In the articulate Benjamin Strang, she found an older man with social prominence and prestige. In her third and final marriage, Lucille found a man in the middle of the spectrum, a respectful, caring, and successful businessman close to her own age and temperament, and acceptable to her father.

  Sometimes in families, the most heated relationships are between members most alike. Like her father, Lucille was intelligent, stubborn, and fiercely determined. Like other children of American celebrities, she was unshielded from the crush of fame’s weight. Had Mulholland been a more nurturing parent, she may have been inspired to dream great dreams and accomplish great deeds like her father. Mulholland was immensely successful but the price of his fame was borne by his children.

  THE STORMY CONFLICTS between Mulholland and Lucille were not evident with his other children, yet his relationships with them were deficient, too. His third child, Thomas, never shared his father’s commitment to hard work and was described as a self-centered loner, relishing obscurity like his mother. Never developing ambitions of his own, Thomas, like Rose, remained single. He never pursued a specific career and worked occasionally as his father’s driver. Both he and Rose lived with Mulholland throughout their adult lives.

  Studious and responsible Perry, the oldest son, married and raised a family. He worked his father’s ranch for forty years, and grew to regret devoting his life to his fat
her’s ambitions instead of his own. Mulholland viewed Perry as the link to future Mulholland generations. While most of the sons of famous and wealthy Los Angeles men were sent away to Stanford or Harvard, Mulholland had other plans for Perry. In 1914, at age twenty-one, Perry was sent to farm the 640-acre Mulholland Ranch in the northwest comer of the San Fernando Valley, located between the tiny townships of Chatsworth and Zetzah (now Northridge). Mulholland began to purchase valley land one year before the finish of the aqueduct. For him, the land was an immigrant’s dream of a comfortable future. But to Perry, it was a millstone.

  Perry had hoped to pursue an education. He recalled his days in the White Mountains as a young man with the U.S. Geological Survey as the high point of his life. He had aspirations of a career in engineering or geology, but instead, spent the next forty years in subjugation to his father’s dreams.

  Perry’s daughter Catherine wrote in her book, Owensmouth Baby, that during this period, a number of Los Angeles business and professional men bought ranching land in the valley and sent their reluctant sons to farm it. Mulholland did not purchase valley land for speculation, she wrote, but “with a landless Irish immigrant’s dream of permanency,” hoping that each of his five children would establish homes where he, the patriarch, “like Job would end his days, blest amidst his groves and heirs.”

  Perry went at his father’s insistence to “join the ranks of young ranchers whose fathers were city men to begin “a lonely bachelor’s life in a prefabricated bungalow” in the isolated San Fernando Valley. In 1914, the valley was a sloping oval plain covering more than 100,000 fertile acres encircled by hills and mountain ranges. Because of the lack of water, the bulk of the valley was uninhabitable, and dry-farming crops like grain, hay, barley, and beans were all that were economically feasible before the aqueduct water arrived. Catherine Mulholland described her father’s remote life in the valley during this period: