Samson De Brier (March 18, 1909 – April 1, 1995) was an

actor An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), li ...

and

occultist The occult, in the broadest sense, is a category of esoteric supernatural beliefs and practices which generally fall outside the scope of religion and science, encompassing phenomena involving otherworldly agency, such as magic and mysticism an ...

, best known for hosting a popular Hollywood salon during the 1950s and 1960s, and for appearing in

Kenneth Anger Kenneth Anger (born Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer, February 3, 1927) is an American underground experimental filmmaker, actor, and author. Working exclusively in short films, he has produced almost 40 works since 1937, nine of which have been grouped ...

's 1954 underground film ''

Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome ''Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome'' is a 38-minute avant-garde short film by Kenneth Anger. It was filmed in December 1953 and completed in 1954. Anger created two other versions of this film in 1966 and the late 1970s. According to him, the fi ...

''.

Biography

Spencer Kansa relates that De Brier was "a flamboyant aesthete often rumoured to be the bastard son of the King of Romania. Whatever the truth of that, De Brier's exotic story began in China where he was born in 1909. Still a child when his family relocated to the States, De Brier grew up in Atlantic City where, so the story goes, his father, a corrupt politician, was stabbed to death by a jealous woman. By his teens he had cultivated the Wildean pose of an elegantly attired dandy. A role he at first adopted, then became totally. To escape the tragedy and scandal, the family moved to Los Angeles where legend has it De Brier enjoyed the briefest of movie careers, understudying the actor

Arthur Jasmine Arthur Jasmine (April 4, 1899 in St. Paul, Minnesota – August 19, 1954 in Los Angeles, California) was an American film actor. Biography Jasmine began his career as a child actor at Essanay Studios in Niles, California. He appeared in 22 ...

as the page of Herodias in Alla Nazimova's scandalous film version of Oscar Wilde's '' Salomé''. When a Hollywood career failed to pan out, De Brier took his sartorial self on a steamer to Paris, a bejeweled 16-year-old draped in a fur coat. In the Paris of the 1920s, he fraternized with ex-pat literati including Hemingway, Joyce,

Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...

and

Henry Miller Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American novelist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical ref ...

. He became a lover of

André Gide André Paul Guillaume Gide (; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1947). Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the Symbolism (arts), symbolist movement, to the advent o ...

(though this claim has not been substantiated), and was allegedly the model for

Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

's ''Pierrot'' series of paintings. On his American return, he hosted the ''Gangplank'' radio show for WMCA in New York, where he interviewed some of the biggest celebrities of the day including

Noël Coward Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time'' magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and ...

Sonja Henie Sonja Henie (8 April 1912 – 12 October 1969) was a Norway, Norwegian figure skating, figure skater and film star. She was a three-time List of Olympic medalists in figure skating, Olympic champion (Figure skating at the 1928 Winter Olympics, ...

and

Thomas Mann Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novella ...

traveling en route to America. After the war he returned to Los Angeles, where he worked the night shift at Lockheed, and had a stint as a male nurse on the psych ward at the Veterans Hospital. He bought a Victorian duplex on Barton Avenue in West Hollywood that included adjoining properties which he rented out, affording himself the freedom to live as a fulltime aesthete and professional putterer. De Brier's home reflected his fondness for

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau (; ) is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. The style is known by different names in different languages: in German, in Italian, in Catalan, and also known as the Modern ...

decor, and velvet drapes, silken oriental robes, Tiffany lamps and ornate objets d'art dominating. A collector of rare Hollywood memorabilia, he salvaged costumes and props purloined from long-forgotten silent classics, and with the house kept in a permanent gothic gloom, it became something of a dark museum." In the 1940s, De Brier left Atlantic City for Los Angeles, and during the Second World War, he worked in a defense plant, sinking his wages into real estate. The rental income from his properties enabled him to stop working and pursue a new career - artistic social butterfly, taking tea and exploring avant-garde scenes." According to Bill Landis, in 1948, Kenneth Anger "discovered a house in the Hollywood Hills that was perfect for the exteriors in

Puce Moment ''Puce Moment'' is a short 6-minute film by Kenneth Anger. Filmed in 1949, ''Puce Moment'' resulted from the unfinished short film ''Puce Women''. The film opens with a camera watching 1920s-style flapper gowns being taken off a dress rack. The dr ...

. The interiors were shot at the home of Samson De Brier, who became a lifelong friend of Anger's. De Brier was a slender, fey, continental type. His old-fashioned air led people to believe that he was much more advanced in years than he was. De Brier had been part of the Atlantic City homosexual milieu depicted in the 1933 novel ''The Young and the Evil'' by

Charles Henri Ford Charles Henri Ford (February 10, 1908 – September 27, 2002) was an American poet, novelist, diarist, filmmaker, photographer, and collage artist. He published more than a dozen collections of poetry, exhibited his artwork in Europe and the Uni ...

and

Parker Tyler Harrison Parker Tyler (March 6, 1904 – June 1974), was an American author, poet, and film critic. Tyler had a relationship with underground filmmaker Charles Boultenhouse (1926–1994) from 1945 until his death. Their papers are held by the New ...

. In the fifties, de Brier began hosting a regular salon at his Barton Avenue home. It flourished for many years and was frequented by artists, writers, actors, filmmakers, and occultists. Visitors were attracted by De Brier's knowledge of the occult (he is said to have practiced

witchcraft Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. A practitioner is a witch. In medieval and early modern Europe, where the term originated, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have us ...

), his store of Hollywood lore, and his collections of movie memorabilia and objets d'art. Among those who attended De Brier's salon were author

Anaïs Nin Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell (February 11, 1903 – January 14, 1977; , ) was a French-born American diarist, essayist, novelist, and writer of short stories and erotica. Born to Cuban parents in France, Nin was the d ...

, filmmakers

and

Curtis Harrington Gene Curtis Harrington (September 17, 1926 – May 6, 2007) was an American film and television director whose work included experimental films, horror films and episodic television. He is considered one of the forerunners of New Queer Cinema. ...

, actors

Jack Nicholson John Joseph Nicholson (born April 22, 1937) is an American retired actor and filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest actors of all time. In many of his films, he played rebels against the social structure. He received numerous ...

and

Dennis Hopper Dennis Lee Hopper (May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010) was an American actor, filmmaker and photographer. He attended the Actors Studio, made his first television appearance in 1954, and soon after appeared in ''Giant'' (1956). In the next ten years ...

, and occultists Jack Parsons,

Marjorie Cameron Marjorie Cameron Parsons Kimmel (April 23, 1922 – June 24, 1995), who professionally used the mononym Cameron, was an American artist, poet, actress and occultist. A follower of Thelema, the new religious movement established by the Engli ...

and Anton LaVey. In 1954 De Brier played several roles, including the principal role, in Anger's ''

'', which was filmed at his home. Harrington, Nin, and Cameron also appeared in the film. De Brier provided a refuge for Kenneth Anger in the late eighties. In 1987, Kenneth Anger "moved into a small caretaker's house on the grounds of Samson De Brier's home in a Mexican section of Los Angeles. Soon the memorabilia and blood-red decor were once again in place." In 1989, the elderly De Brier, with his friend Wendy Hyland, attended an exhibition of

's works entitled ''The Pearl of Reprisal'' held at Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery at

Barnsdall Art Park Barnsdall Art Park is a city park located in the East Hollywood district of Los Angeles, California. Parking and arts buildings access is from Hollywood Boulevard on the north side of the park. The park is a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument ...

, at which Cameron also read her poetry. Spencer Kansa relates that "When the PA kept cutting out, making Cameron inaudible, De Brier began complaining, so vociferously that the director of the gallery exclaimed get that old hairdresser out of here!". De Brier died on April Fools' Day 1995 at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital. Spencer Kansa relates that according to his old friend Wendy Hyland, De Brier had become a curmudgeon in his old age, prone to bouts of embarrassing behavior, making scenes in restaurants and with a phobia about apples. He lived his last years like a hermit, doing his best to keep ugly reality outside the haven of his own home. A memorial for him was held at the art centre Beyond Baroque in Venice. Photographs from De Brier's house were exhibited upstairs and a print of ''

'' and '' Salomé'' were played for the attendees.Spencer Kansa. ''Wormwood Star: The Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron.'' Oxford: Mandrake UK, 2011, p. 252 De Brier's papers are housed at the

ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California Libraries is the oldest existing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) organization in the United States and one of the largest repositories of LGBT materials ...

at the University of Southern California Libraries.

Biography

References

Further reading