"The True Story of Col. Griffith Jenkins Griffith and his Park”
by Mike Betette
So, Los Angeles’ Griffith Park is cursed. Way cursed. In fact, some say the park was cursed even before Griffith J. Griffith came along. Not me though, I think those people are dumb. Those dumb people say that Griffith’s misfortunes actually came from the land itself. Don Antonio Feliz, the original owner of Griffith Park, died of small pox in 1863 and left his extensive land holdings to Don Antonio Coronel. Subsequently, his blind, destitute 17-year old niece, Dona Petronilla, cursed the land, saying great misfortune would come to whoever owned it. Dona’s ghost, dressed in white, is said to still roam the park. In 1932, Peg Entwhistle, a Welsh born actress killed herself by jumping off the Hollywood “H” and her ghost is also said to linger. The park is even where Babe Ruth heard he was being traded from the Boston Red Sox to the New York Yankees, while golfing. Making it the birthplace of the 'Curse of the Bambino', which lasted 86 years. Back to the Future II was even shot there, which itself is fine, but it did lead to the inevitable tragedy of Back to the Future III. And the ghost riding horseback throughout the park? That one is supposedly Griffith himself. But whether the land made the man or the man made the land, Griffith Park will always be synonymous with it’s namesake. So what’s the big deal about Griffith and his park?
Well, Griffith Park is one of the largest urban parks in America, second largest in the entire state of California, called the Central Park of Los Angeles. Four thousand two hundred and ten acres between the Golden State Freeway, Los Feliz Boulevard and the Ventura Freeway. It contains, among other things, an old zoo, a merry go-round, train rides, an equestrian center, a Greek Theater, a Gene Autry museum, a famous Hollywood sign and wide open areas consistently filled with picnicking families, kid’s birthday parties, bike riders, dog walkers and barbequing Los Angelinos. A beautiful place, a true piece of California history.
Here is what LAcity.org website teaches us about our great landmark:
“Originally a part of the Spanish land grant, Rancho Los Feliz, the park was named for its former owner, Colonel Griffith J. Griffith. Born in Glamorganshire, South Wales, Griffith immigrated to the United States in 1865, eventually, making a personal fortune in California gold mine speculation. In 1882, Griffith settled in Los Angeles, and purchased a 4,071-acre portion of the Rancho Los Feliz, which stretched northward from the northern boundaries of the Pueblo de Los Angeles. On December 16, 1896, the civic-minded Griffith bequeathed 3,015 acres of his Rancho Los Feliz estate as a Christmas gift to the people of Los Angeles to be used as parkland. The enormous gift, equal to five square miles, was to be given to the city unconditionally - or almost so.
It must be made a place of recreation and rest for the masses, a resort for the rank and file, for the plain people," Griffith said on that occasion. " I consider it my obligation to make Los Angeles a happier, cleaner, and finer city. I wish to pay my debt of duty in this way to the community in which I have prospered."
This is nice, but not really “cursed-worthy” material. Luckily, the truth of Col. Griffith Jenkins Griffith is bit more sordid than LAcity.org would like you to believe.
To begin, the “colonel” was a fake title, like “Blogger” or “Administrative assistant.” Self-inflicted by a man whose only true military title was “Major of Riflery Practice with the California National Guard.” His weaponry skills, however, do come in handy later in life. But let’s start at the beginning. Mr. Griffith did come to America as a Welsh Immigrant 1866, but the story of how he made his money is what we nowadays call “illegal”, more specifically, insider trading. After teaching himself a bit about mining and mineralogy he received a job as a reporter covering the mines for the Daily Alto California, a San Francisco newspaper. Meanwhile, he was writing confidential mining reports and selling them to rich investors. But before he doled out the reports, he just happened to invest in these same mining operations himself. Probably not a coincidence, seeing that it made him a millionaire. In 1882 he cashed out and moved down to Los Angeles, buying the 4071 acre Rancho Los Feliz. You may be saying to yourself, ‘That must have cost a big chunk of money back then, even for him.’ It was, which is why, two years later he sold some of its water rights to the city two years later recouping his investment. In your face, doubter. According to one reminiscing reporter, “He was a sensation...He wore the longest of cream-colored overcoats in an age when overcoats usually came to the heels, and he carried a gold-headed cane and wore moss agate cuff buttons, big round ones.” I assume that gold-headed canes were the tiny designer dogs of their day, because Griffith became known as one cocky fella. Dissed by locals as a “roly-poly, pompous little fellow” with “an exaggerated strut like a turkey gobbler” and a “midget egomaniac”. He even created an Ostrich farm on his property. Usually, Ostrich farms were used for making women’s hats, however Griffith only used it to lure in and awe local residents. One story tells of the “col” performing a favor for a young entrepreneur by agreeing to walk arm in arm with him down the street, so that he may be seen with Griffith and thereby helping his stature. Purportedly, he also refused to run for local public office, afraid he would then be begged to run for president of the United States. And back then if you weren’t Grover Cleveland you didn’t have a very good chance of being elected.
Back to the facts, on January 27th, 1887 Griffith married into more money, and respect, wedding the daughter of the owner of the hotel where he was residing. The daughter was Mary Agnes Christina Mesmer. A sidenote: while researching this piece I found that depending on the publications of the day she was better known as “Tina” or “Tena”, which brought up a variety of questions. Like, did editors of old newspapers not know how to spell? Or did reporters have so little accountability they never had to check any facts? Maybe from 1887-1913 were some newspaper’s “i” or “e” broken, depending on the publication? Or is Tena an antiquated version of Tina that evolved over time in some form of Darwinian etymology where Tena was killed off because it’s weak “e” couldn’t facilitate a heart on top, leaving Tina to rule. Either way, to get back on track, Ti/ena and the “Col” were the joining of “two immense estates” and they went on a European honeymoon that was “the most extensive ever contemplated by any bridal party in Los Angeles.” Things seemed to be going well and being seemingly legitimately civic-mindedly on Christmas week in 1896 Griffith donated 3,105 acres to the city for a “great park” so that Los Angeles could become a great city (read B.S. LAcity.org quote from above).
However, as he became more rich and powerful Griffith also became more paranoid and crazy. According to his manicurist he compulsively bit his nails. I wonder how much the TMZ of the day paid for that bit of highly coveted information? He BIT his NAILS? Who cares? Fine, biting your nails isn’t crazy enough. How about drinking? No, how about drinking, on average, two quarts of whiskey a day while being publicly aligned with the city’s strong temperance movement. His lawyer would later call him a “sneak drinker.” He sneaks two quarts a day? That’s impressive, I think that’s officially a magician. Still not convinced he’s nuts, that maybe he’s just a neurotic, hypocritical drunk? Here ya go… As things worsened he began switching his and his wife’s food and drinks, believing that his Catholic wife was in league with the Pope and that they were trying to poison him for his money. Boom! There’s your crazy.
In August of 1903 Ti/ena suggested he take a break, that a vacation would do him some good. They ended up going to the Arcadia Hotel in Santa Monica to relax for a month. Yeah, vacationing a full 23 miles away outta cure anybody. They checked into the Presidential Suite overlooking the palisades, Ti/ena hoping the cool ocean breeze would fix her husband’s strange behavior right up. And it did, for the entire vacation! Well, almost the entire vacation. On the last day, Sept 3rd, while Ti/ena was packing her things Griffith entered the room holding a Bible in one hand an a revolver in the other. He told her to get down on her knees. She did and asked him if she could pray. Then he shot her. In the face. With the gun, not The Bible. The bullet caught her eye, bloody and terrified, she jumped out the window landing on an awning that saved her life. The papers called her “the society wife that wouldn’t die.” A catchy Lifetime movie title if I’ve heard one. At their divorce proceedings (Oh hells yeah there were divorce proceedings) Dr. Moore explained, “There was a bullet hole in her eyebrow…I discovered that a part of the bullet had been deflected upward into the forehead. She was given stimulants. The next morning she was driven to the California Hospital. The eye was removed and the bullet extracted from the socket.” Neither the bullet nor the eye would ever work again. It seemed like a pretty open and shut case, but never underestimate the rich and crazy. Griffith’s side of the story, at first, was that his lovely wife shot herself and then jumped out of a window...for some reason. So, the Mesmer family procured a team of popular trial lawyers including Henry T. Gage, former California governor. Griffith secured himself Earl Rogers, the most celebrated trial attorney of the time. Rogers set up a case based on Griffith acting under the delusions of “alcohol insanity”, where one moment he would be an average loving husband, but after a few drinks he would turn into a violent monster who didn’t know any better, all inspired by the popular new story Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Seriously. This defense worked much better than his first idea, using another the new book, “The Tale of Peter Rabbit” explaining Griffith shot his wife for eating his parsley and was just trying to bake her into a pie. Not seriously.
The trial began January 11th, 1904. Rogers wanted a full acquittal; Henry Cage wanted the death penalty. According to the Los Angeles Sunday Times during the trial Mrs. Griffith told the jury how she explained to the hotel manager that her husband shot her and “must be crazy”. Rogers replied with, “You knew, didn’t you Mrs. Griffith, that your husband couldn’t have shot you or tried to kill you if he hadn’t been crazy, drunk and insane from alcohol?” She agreed, and with that Gage ended his cross-examination.
Gage’s one good moment would be overshadowed, however, when later in the trail Cage lifted Mesmer’s veil to reveal her disfiguring scar to the jury and Griffith began grimacing and laughing, causing a ruckus. A ruckus and a losing case. After a parade of witnesses and various “brain disorder experts” the jury was dismissed. They deliberated for two days before finding Griffith Jenkins Griffith guilty, sentencing him to two years in the San Quentin penitentiary with medical attention for his alcoholic insanity.
[A bit of irony to add to this story is that Rogers himself was a big drinker and his daughter tried to have him institutionalized. According to her reports he said to her, “Nora, you don’t believe I’m insane, do you? She responded “No no, Papa, no no — of course not”, and dropped it. Shortly after, Rogers succumbed to his indulgences, and died at the age of fifty-two.]
While incarcerated, Col. Griffith paid his dues. Denied alcohol, he turned down the easier prisoner duties like working in the library for the harshest one like making burlap sacks, which even back then I assume were only used as jokes for when people wanted to dress “poor”. When he was up for parole he refused to apply. Instead, he served out his full two-year sentence. And good for him, spending an entire two years in prison after shooting his wife in the face. When released, in 1906, he was said to be quieter and much less pompous. Living in a concrete room will do that to you, I bet. Even if it is for just a couple years.
Again during Christmas week, his “philanthropy time”, Griffith wrote a letter to the mayor and the city council with an offer of $100,000 to build an observatory upon the former, Mt. Griffith, which had since been changed to Mt. Hollywood, you know, because he shot his wife’s eye off her face. He wrote, “Ambition must have broad spaces and mighty distances.” But the city wasn’t buying it, probably the whole shot-wife-face-drunk thing. The people refused the money. A citizen’s letter in response to Griffith’s offer ran on the front page of a local newspaper reading, “On behalf of the rising generation of girls and boys we protest against the acceptance of this bribe…This community is neither so poor nor so lost to sense of public decency that it can afford to accept this money.” As the official Greek theater website puts it, with no mention of his nasty little two-year incarceration “It was an idea whose time had not yet come”. But the colonel, either actually having fallen in love with astronomy and realizing how small and insignificant his life was in the vastness of the cosmos, as according to much of the literature at the observatory, or not really having changed at all and being desperate for a better legacy and the cities admiration again, pressed on. He offered an additional $50,000 to build the Greek Theater. He even went so far as to start construction on his own, until the park Commission brought suit, forcing him to stop. At this point, Griffith seemed to know there was no chance of him becoming the city’s golden child again. No chance he could win them back and construct his additions. At least…not while he was alive. Booya!
According to the official Griffith Park Observatory website “[In December 1912] The City Council accepted Griffith's gift [of $100,000] and appointed him head of a three-person Trust committee to supervise the construction of the observatory…Bogged down by further political debate, the project continued to be delayed.” In reality, it seems more likely that Griffith started a trust himself in hopes the city would use the funds after he died and still name it after him.
Griffith died on July 6th, 1919. Happy day! The city’s rich grandpa was dead and they wasted no time. They immediately started creating blueprints for the amphitheater so they could spend that cash. The first cornerstone for the Greek Amphitheater was finally laid in late 1928 and the project was completed in 1929.
Astronomers were called in to begin the blueprints for the Observatory in 1930, its groundbreaking ceremony was on June 20, 1933 and it officially opened on May 14, 1935. All by using the trust fund of a crazy dead guy, because hey, its still money! I mean, sure he did a lot of bad things, but he was dead now. Sixteen long years was plenty of time for memories to fade and an eye to grow back, right? So, the city let bygones be bygones and re-named the park and the observatory after Griffith, giving a man his posthumous dream; and letting his cursed ghost ride bareback across the land. Booya.
Currently a tangible Griffith Jenkins Griffith, sans the “col.”, stands at the entrance to Griffith Park between Los Feliz Blvd and Crystal Springs Dr. in statue form. He wears his sexy, pompously long big buttoned coat, holding his gold headed cane and the inscription reads: “Public parks are a safety valve of great cities and should be made accessible and attractive where neither race, creed nor color could be excluded.” According to the Griffith park website, “Griffith Park stands today a monument to the dedicated vision of one man--Griffith Jenkins Griffith, Park Commission, civic philanthropist, advocate of parklands, and fervent speaker of recreation for the health of Los Angeles.”
Personally, I like to think of him as he truly was, that guy who paid for the park I try to exercise at, drank two quarts of whiskey a day, went crazy and shot his wife in the face and told people she shot herself, blamed the pope, barely went to jail for it and tried to sucker the city into loving him again, which he did successfully. Oh, and bit his nails—compulsively! In the great words of The Decemberists, “Los Angeles I’m Yours.”
