Music: One Enchanted Evening at Hearst Castle

Hearst Castle is gearing up for its 50th anniversary as a state park with a series of events that begin this weekend and include a day of free castle tours

By Sarah Linn

COURTESY PHOTO

Guests enjoy last year’s Twilight on the Terrace event.

Click any image to enlarge.

SYMPHONY AT HEARST CASTLE

5 p. m. Saturday Hearst Castle State Park, San Simeon $500 927-2138, www.friendsofhearstcastle.org HEARST CASTLE EVENTS

• “Going Hollywood,” May 1. This fashion show at Hearst’s San Simeon warehouse highlights the styles of cinema’s Golden Age. $75; $225 for Salon Series.

• Twilight on the Terrace, May 31. Sip wine, nibble on gourmet goodies and enjoy a stunning sunset at this event, which includes jazz music and a live auction. $100.

Free tours, June 2. In celebration of its 50th anniversary, Hearst Castle offers a day of free tours to the public. Free.

Contact Friends of Hearst Castle for more information: 927-2138 or www.friendsofhearstcastle.org

For Hearst Castle, this is a year of milestones.

It’s been nearly 50 years since the lavish hilltop mansion once owned by media mogul William Randolph Hearst opened as a state park.

Since then, the San Simeon estate has attracted millions of visitors with its grand Spanishstyle buildings, Roman pools and lush gardens. Heart’s vast art collection, ranging from priceless paintings and statuary to 15th-century ceilings, still wows.

“The state of California has a great treasure trove at the castle here,” said Hoyt Fields, director of the Hearst Castle Museum.

To celebrate, the nonprofit Friends of Hearst Castle is sponsoring a series of galas, lectures and special tours aimed at drawing visitors to “La Cuesta Encantada.”

The series begins this weekend with a special screening of the silent film “Show People” in the ornate gilt-and-velvet theater where Hearst and his Hollywood pals once watched the latest films. The San Luis Obispo Symphony will provide a live soundtrack.

To the organizers’ knowledge, “Show People” is the first full-length feature film to be shown there since California took control of Hearst Castle. The screening coincides with the 80th anniversary of the movie.

“For movie buffs, this is really a special event,” said symphony conductor Michael Nowak.

“The Enchanted Hill”

According to organizers, Saturday’s screening is the perfect opportunity to explore the estate that Hearst called “La Cuesta Encantada” — Spanish for “The Enchanted Hill”—or simply, “the ranch.”

“We’ve always felt that music belongs in the Castle,” said Carol Schreiber, executive director of Friends of Hearst Castle.

About 80 movie lovers will settle in the same cushy chairs where Hearst and his longtime companion, comedienne Marion Davies, once sat. It’s only appropriate, then, that Davies will also be onscreen.

“Show People” was directed by King Vidor, who lived in Paso Robles from the 1920s to the 1950s. In it, Davies stars as Peggy Pepper, a Georgia beauty who dreams of becoming a Hollywood starlet—only to dump beau Billy (William Haines) when she switches from low-brow comedies to “high art.”

“It’s a great vehicle for Marion Davies,” said Nowak, calling the movie funny and touching. “There are good guys and bad guys and slapstick and all those things.”

Film buffs will recognize cameos by many of the big-name stars of the day, including leading man Douglas Fairbanks Sr., comedian Charlie Chaplin and gossip columnist Louella Parsons. All were frequent guests at Hearst’s ranch.

As the film rolls, the San Luis Obispo symphony will play. According to Nowak, Carl Davis’ 400-page score provides plenty of opportunities for musical mugging — sobbing violin for sentimental scenes, crashing cymbals for comic pratfalls.

“It’s 80 minutes of nonstop action,” the conductor said.

Plans for this concert have been in the works for years, Nowak said, adding that such symphony concerts are rare.

The symphony last performed “Show People” in 1996, recalled symphony marketing director Patty Thayer. The group performed a live score for a Buster Keaton film, “One Week,” in 2001.

On Saturday, guests will enjoy Central Coast wines, gourmet goodies and music by jazz singer Inga Swearingen and friends at the Hearst Castle Visitor Center before the film, Schreiber said. They’ll join the symphony musicians for dessert and coffee at the indoor Roman Pool afterward.

At $500 a person, the price for the event is steep, Schreiber admitted.

However, she said, the cost is borne out by the gala’s unique nature and lavish presentation, as well as the difficulty of staging an event at Hearst Castle. Everything, from dishes and silverware to a portable outdoor kitchen, must be hauled up the Enchanted Hill.

“If you can do an event at Hearst Castle, you can do it in the Sahara Desert,” Schreiber quipped.

Free tours in June

On the other end of the economic scale is a day of free tours on June 2, exactly 50 years after the first public visitors stepped onto Hearst Castle grounds.

Organizers hope to usher up to 3,120 people through the estate.

A five-lecture series, modeled after the salons held by family matriarch Phoebe Apperson Hearst, kicks off May 1 with “Going Hollywood.” The spring fashion show will take audiences back in time as volunteers from Hearst Castle’s Living History Program model chic vintage outfits.

Lectures on the estate’s outdoor sculptures, fine art, tapestries and textiles follow. And there are a handful of elegant evening events planned for the castle’s terraces.

Meanwhile, park officials hope to attract art lovers through exhibitions of Hearst’s vast collection.

“Hearst: The Collector,” which opens at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in November, will feature 17 works currently on display at Hearst Castle, Fields said, including a huge marble statue of the Roman goddess Venus and a Tiffany lamp. Two paintings by 19th-century neoclassicist Jean-León Gérôme are heading to France this fall.

“You go into any given room up there and you have hundreds of thousands of artifacts,” Fields said, adding that Hearst-collected artworks sit in Paris’ Louvre and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Our art is just out of this world, just spectacular.”

Ultimately, event organizers say, they want to spread the word about Hearst Castle.

“I’m always amazed when I do free presentations how many people who live in the county have not visited the castle,” Schreiber said.

“The Hearst Castle tours are the best value in town, I think,” she added. “Where else can you have history, wonderful stories, nostalgia and absolutely phenomenal art?”