This bonus content illustrates the text for part 7. Due to the personal nature of the images —including images and video of the Goldwyn/Swift estate interior/ exteriors over a span of 75 years—and my desire to respect my family and Taylor Swift’s privacy it is viewable only for paid subscribers. Not to be republished or shared, ‘cause KARMA xoxo
Remember when I told you about the pink house that belonged to William Randolph Hearst & Marion Davies that was adjacent to ours? I often wish I could time travel just to scope the party scene that took place at my family & the Hearst’s houses back in the day. Lydia Hearst, great-granddaughter of W.R Hearst and the daughter of Patricia; and I once appeared in a Bottega Veneta ad campaign together, though I’m not sure that “nepo baby” was the art directive. We were photographed by the fine art photographer Stephen Shore in a decaying mansion upstate New York (again, I doubt a commentary on either of our family homes, as they were kept up pretty well, but looking back it’s possible to read into it.) My dad used to tell me stories about spending weekends at the Hearst castle, San Simeon, in Northern California as a little kid, where he’d be left alone while the adults partied. He was once nearly bitten by a rattlesnake in the famous indoor “Roman” pool there.
You can see the Hearst’s grand pink estate in the photo below just above our tennis court. I took this photo from the ledge of my childhood bedroom window that used to be my Dads fifty years before. As a teenager, I’d sit on this ledge with friends smoking cigarettes and weed. Amazing how many people we could fit up there, feet dangling. Some hot make-outs and long (landline) phone calls took place there too.