Horseback riding, golf, polo matches, faux fox hunts – all of them were popular pursuits among the high society set during the early development of the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
The taming of the Peninsula began with the sale of lots for Palos Verdes Estates in early 1923. At the time, there was little sign of civilization there, save for a few buildings at Malaga Cove. East Coast banker Frank Vanderlip had purchased the undeveloped land in 1913 and built an estate he named Villa Narcissa in the then-remote Portuguese Bend area.
From the beginning, Palos Verdes was intended to be a meticulously planned city. The Palos Verdes Homes Association was formed in 1923, and it in turn formed an adjunct group, the Palos Verdes Art Jury, whose purpose would be to maintain the area’s planning standards and stylistic uniformity.
Land sales were brisk at Malaga Cove, and the Art Jury strictly policed its style mandates. When the area’s natural beauty was combined with the landscape designs by the Olmsted brothers, the resulting settlement attracted both the rich and famous.
Recreation opportunities abounded, and developers added two key man-made facilities as part of their original plans. The La Venta Inn was first to open in 1923, followed by the Palos Verdes Golf Club in 1924.
Architect brothers Pierpont and Walter Swindell Davis designed the Spanish-style Inn, with the Olmsteds laying out its lush outdoor grounds.
During the 1920s and 1930s, a long list of celebrities and movie stars dined indoors and al fresco at the Inn, considered to be a high-class celebrity hideaway at the time. Famous visitors included aviator Charles Lindbergh, violinist Jascha Heifetz, and movie stars Greta Garbo, Tyrone Power, Cary Grant, Gloria Swanson, Myrna Loy, Errol Flynn, Betty Grable, Margaret Sullavan, Charlie Chaplin, Janet Gaynor and Bob Hope.
Designed and built by the renowned team of William P. “Billy” Bell and George C. Thomas, the Palos Verdes Golf Club was a hit from the very beginning. Just days after it opened, plans were already underway to expand its clubhouse building.
Hollywood star spotters could’ve caught Walter Pidgeon working on a film there in 1926. Douglas Fairbanks made a memorable appearance there during a 1928 tournament. In 1930, MGM Studios sponsored a celebrity golf tournament that included studio stars such as Buster Keaton and Robert Montogomery, father of Eliabeth Montgomery of “Bewitched” fame.
In 1950, parts of the film “Follow The Sun” were shot there. Legendary golfer Ben Hogan and Glenn Ford, the actor who played him in the biographical film, stayed at the golf course during filming.
Horses and equine-related activities also have long been a part of the Peninsula recreational scene. Developers and city planners built a series of bridle paths and trails in open country especially meant for the ponies, along with separate walking spaces for people.
The original Palos Verdes Project called for 14 miles of bridle trails, with their number and length only increasing as the area continued to be developed.
Stables and equestrian clubs formed early on. Horseback riding instructor O.C. Clausby moved his operation from Beverly Hills to the Peninsula, opening the Palos Verdes Riding Academy, on May 17, 1925, in a barn adjacent to the Palos Verdes Golf Club.
In its early days, Clausby apparently also fashioned an impromptu polo field on a natural stadium-like area among the nearby hills in the Valmonte area. Information on the field is scant, but we feel free to speculate that informal polo games held there probably attracted upper crust denizens.
Little more than a decade later, area socialite Mrs. Phyllis French attracted the attention of blue bloods from Beverly Hills to Pasadena when she formed the Rolling Hills Hunt Club in 1937. Its purpose? To stage fox hunts.
According to the Palos Verdes Land Conservancy, a small population of red and gray foxes continue to live on The Hill even in 2024. But the Hunt Club didn’t actually hunt the critters. French’s group staged what are known as “drag hunts.”
During drag hunts, the nattily attired horse riders sporting those distinctive black riding hats would follow bloodhounds chasing through the hills after fox scents carefully applied beforehand by hunt organizers in the wild. There was no actual live fox involvement.
The Palos Verdes Peninsula News described the club’s initial drag hunt in 1938 as a “complete success,” noting that “the large field, composed of notables and the cream of society, raced across the horizon with both the vast Pacific and Santa Catalina Island lending their majestic qualities to the background.”
Participants and observers at the hunts in 1938 and 1939 included fur fortune heir John Jacob Astor VI and his wife Ellen, actors Victor McLaglen and his wife Enid, Charles Laughton, who owned 15 acres of land nearby, Robert Montgomery (again) and actress Claudette Colbert, who watched her husband Joel Pressman participate.
Those were indeed different times. But the large network of bridle trails and a host of active stables and horse riding clubs, along with the Palos Verdes Golf Club and La Venta Inn, continue to be an important part of the Palos Verdes Peninsula’s cultural and social fabric.
Sources:
Daily Breeze archives.
Los Angeles Times archives
.“Palos Verdes Golf Club: A Historic Hole-in-One” by Denise Kano, DIGS website, Jan. 15, 2018.
“No, your eyes aren’t playing tricks on you. South Bay is actually home to a little red fox population,” by Yusra Farzan, LAist website, July 16, 2024.
Palos Verdes Peninsula News archives.
“PVP’s Equestrian Lifestyle,” by Dennis Piotrowski and Monique Sugimoto, Palos Verdes Magazine, June 18, 2024.
Wikipedia.
