The Legacy of Griffith Park
Griffith Park–one of LA’s most treasured icons. Home to the Observatory, the Hollywood sign, the LA Zoo, trains, and hiking trails, its four thousand plus acres are a wilderness paradise in the heart of a giant city. What’s not to love? Well, perhaps not the man it’s named for, Griffith J Griffith who bestowed this gift on the people of LA. At least, not if you were his unfortunate wife Christina. Keep reading for a scandalous tale of curses, corruption, and crime.
The Rancho Los Feliz Curse
Griffith J Griffith, originally a penniless immigrant from Glamorgan, Wales, came to Los Angeles in 1882 with a million dollars to his name.
Before that, he’d been working as a reporter in San Francisco, he covered the mining industry which put him in a position to sell hot tips to would-be investors. These days that would be called insider trading and he might have found himself doing time in Club Fed. But it helped make Griffith rich and his own investments in Mexican silver mines made him even richer.
Arriving in LA, he bought 4,000 acres of the Rancho Los Feliz Mexican land grant that came complete with a curse. Twenty years earlier the Rancho was in the hands of Don Antonio Feliz who lived in the adobe with his beloved niece Petranilla who expected to be his heir.
But as he lay dying from smallpox in 1863, a former mayor of Los Angeles named Antonio Coronel persuaded him to sign papers giving the Rancho to him instead. A furious Petranilla uttered a curse, dealing death to her enemies and destruction to the land:
“A blight shall fall on this terrestrial paradise. The cattle shall sicken. The fields shall no longer respond to the tiller. I see a great flood spreading destruction. I see grand oaks wither in the tongues of flames.”
At least, that is the story that has been handed down. The Rancho did fall on hard times; floods and fires abounded, trees withered from drought, and the cattle got sick and died. Its final owner was delighted to offload it on Griffith J Griffith.
The Heiress and the Colonel
Griffith yearned to be part of high society and for this he needed a wife. Enter Christina Mesmer, one of the daughters of a rich and established LA family and a millionaire in her own right thanks to inherited money. She was also about to inherit another quarter of a million from the death of a family friend.
When Griffith met her at a hotel her father owned, he knew he had hit the jackpot in the matrimonial stakes. Christina was pretty, sweet-tempered, accomplished, and his entree into the top echelons of LA society.
How could he not love a girl who grew up in the Mesmer home on Manitou Avenue?
After a speedy courtship, they were engaged. But two weeks before the wedding, Griffith wrote Christina a nasty letter threatening to call it off. He’d learned that her sister was also an heir of the generous family friend and Christina’s share wasn’t enough for him. He wanted her sister’s as well. Rather than face the scandal of a broken engagement, the family gave in and the wedding went ahead. It did no good for Griffith’s reputation. It was rumored he’d left the wedding reception early to cross the street to the courthouse and get all of Christina’s property transferred to his name.
At this point a lot of people really didn’t like Griffith J Griffith. He wore ridiculously fancy clothes and carried a gold-knobbed cane wherever he went. He demanded that people call him Colonel, a title he had bestowed on himself. When people called him the Prince of Whales, they meant whales as in Moby Dick, not the place where he grew up.
The Ostrich Farm Fiasco
Someone who really hated Griffith was Frank Burkett. Soon after arriving in LA, Griffith was talked into using some of the property for an ostrich farm and he put Frank Burkett in charge of it. Weird as it sounds, ostrich farms could be very profitable back then because of the constant demand for ostrich feathers for women’s hats. As well, visiting an ostrich farm was like a day at the zoo.
But the farm failed and Griffith kicked Burkett off his property. One day Griffith and Christina were driving away from the old Catholic Calvary Cemetery which now lies underneath Cathedral High School.
Griffith was suddenly hit with a blast of birdshot from the weapon of a deranged Frank Burkett who had been lying in wait for him. Despite his injuries, Griffith turned to confront Burkett who shot himself with a revolver and died at the scene.
The Griffiths had one son; they also had a very unhappy marriage. It was suspected that he was abusive to Christina behind closed doors; it was an open secret that, despite his denials, he drank a lot. He also owed a lot of money to the city in back taxes.
A Gift to the People: The Creation of Griffith Park
Despite some unpleasant character traits, Griffith was genuinely a philanthropist. He had previously sold water rights from the Rancho to the city at a bargain basement price. So when he decided to give 3000 acres to the city as a Christmas gift in 1896, it might have been because of those unpaid taxes. But it was also because he believed ordinary working class Angelenos needed a park. That’s why he gave it on condition that entrance must be free of charge–not just during his lifetime but forever.
A reporter named Horace Bell said that when the city fathers gathered at the Rancho to celebrate the gift, they were confronted with the ghost of Don Antonio Feliz. According to the imaginative Mr. Bell, the specter declaimed: “Señores, I am Antonio Feliz, [I’ve] come to invite you to dine with me in hell. In your great honor, I have brought an escort of sub demons.” He then pursued them on horseback as they fled into the night.
A Descent into Paranoia and Violence
After such a fabulous gift, Griffith finally had the social status he’d always wanted. He was elected to the finest clubs and was treated with honor wherever he went. But things were bad on the homefront. Griffith, a Protestant, had always disliked his Catholic wife’s religion. But now, perhaps because years of alcohol abuse had damaged his brain, he took it into his head that Christina was in league with the Pope to steal his money.
That would have been bad enough but he also decided his wife was trying to poison him. Whenever they were served food, he insisted on trading plates with his wife. Things came to a head in 1903 on the last night of a family vacation at the luxurious Hotel Arcadia in Santa Monica.
In their bedroom in the Presidential Suite, Griffith demanded that Christina kneel before him with her hand upon her prayerbook. Then he fired questions at her. Had she been unfaithful to him? Was she trying to harm him? Despite her impassioned denials, Griffith didn’t believe her. He shot her in the face at point-blank range. Christina dived or fell out of the window and landed on the roof below.
An Unprecedented Defense
Griffith’s trial set the pattern for LA trials to come. An immensely rich and powerful man charged with trying to murder his wife. A celebrity lawyer Earl Rogers who invented a defense that had never been used before–we could call it the Alcohol Abuse Excuse. Testimony about years of domestic violence.
Cynics predicted the jury would let him off easy–and it did. He was convicted only of assault with a deadly weapon and was sentenced to two years in prison. He was an exemplary prisoner, refused early parole, and insisted on doing hard labor like everyone else. His wife divorced him and spent the rest of her life in seclusion. Her face had been badly disfigured.
Lasting Gifts and a Complicated Legacy
When he came home to LA, Griffith wanted to give the city a world-class observatory and a theater but, under pressure from the public, the city said no. This time even all his money couldn’t buy respectability. But Griffith got his way after all. On his death in 1919, it turned out he’d willed most of his estate to the city of Los Angeles–enough money to build an observatory and the Greek theater and enough to maintain them for years to come. And, as with the park itself, no admission fee was ever to be charged.
He is buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery where he has not merely a plot but also a lawn called–what else?–the Griffith Lawn. He would have liked that.
Shakespeare said that the evil men do lives after them while the good is oft interred with their bones. Maybe it will go the other way with Griffith J Griffith. He did some terrible things but the gift he gave us and generations to come has become part of our identity as Angelenos. His statue stands at the entrance to the park. Whenever I pause to gaze at it, I say a silent “thank you” to Griffith, and a fervent expression of sympathy to his poor wife.
All photographs are either in the public domain (primarily Wikimedia) or were taken by me