The novelist Upton Sinclair wrote over one hundred books which must make him the most prolific writer in all of history, but don’t quote us on that. Sinclair was celebrated as a man of letters and political devotion during his own lifetime. Writing in the mid twentieth century, he was what was known as a muckraker. Time Magazine called him “a man of every gift except humor and silence.”
Upton Sinclair is, perhaps, best known for penning The Jungle though many might be more familiar with the plot of a novel titled OIL upon which the film There Will Be Blood was based. The villain in the film, Daniel Plainview, is a fictionalized version of a tycoon named Edward L. Doheny.
In the 1920’s Mr. Doheny ordered the construction of the most expensive, even to this day, private residence ever built in the city of Los Angeles. Spending four million on twenty-two acres and a forty-six thousand square foot single residence, Mr. Doheny managed to shell out forty times the cost of the Lookout Inn which featured seventy swanky rooms and required the hauling of building materials and equipment to the top of a mountain.
even in those years the Canyon had an oddly high death rate
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This construction is known as Greystone Mansion and it sits empty, still, in Laurel Canyon. The monstrosity, err mansion, was a quaint wedding gift for his son, Edward “Ned” Doheny, Jr. who committed himself to holy matrimony in 1928. But even in those years the Canyon had an oddly high death rate and both Ned and his assistant, Hugh Plunkett, would be found dead, by gunshot wounds, inside the mansion only months after the housewarming festivities.
On the night of the gruesome deaths, the Doheny family doctor, being a man clearly dedicated to his patients, agreed to arrive, along with other family members, before any authorities were even alerted to the blood bath. Though it was openly admitted to the police, once they were finally notified, that the bodies had been moved prior to their arrival they saw nothing particularly suspicious otherwise and wrote the scene off as a gay lovers spat that had escalated, tragically, to a classic murder/suicide.
the investigation was brought to an end to spare a grieving father
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We will never know what happened that night to end the lives of both Ned and Hugh nor will we ever hear the testimony they were about to provide before a Senate investigating committee looking into the Harding-era Teapot Dome Scandal. In fact, we will never know anything much about that scandal at all since, as compassionate societies are known to do, the investigation was brought to an end to spare a grieving father, who was up to his eyeballs in the affair, any further emotional hardship.
The Mansion was never again occupied by anyone but forty years later a different Ned Doheny from the same family of oil scions would join the spontaneously erupting hippie music scene for which Laurel Canyon will eventually become infamous.
Secret Antenna will have nothing further to say about any of the Doheny’s when we make our return to the Canyon in our upcoming episode, but we thought we would, as Dave McGowan said, toss it into the mix.
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