ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Books, like cities, are never solo creations, and I’m extremely grateful to a number of people for helping me transform a wild, inchoate idea into something solid and tangible.

I owe a particularly heavy debt to Fred Barker, a retired engineer who worked for many years at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Fred, who is widely regarded as the DWP’s unofficial historian, graciously agreed to go over all of the water-related sections of the book, and he set me straight on numerous points of history and engineering (including the physics behind a sag pipe and why it is really not an “inverted siphon,” despite being described as such in so much of the aqueduct literature). Thanks go as well to the chain of people who first led me to Fred—journalist Randy Dotinga, who connected me with blogger and L.A. tour guide Richard Schave, who put me in contact with Christine Mulholland (the Chief’s great-grandniece), who in turn steered me to Fred.

For the early Hollywood material I had similar help from author and friend Arnie Bernstein, who has written extensively on silent film. I’m also indebted to the formidable Hollywood scholar Cari Beauchamp, who kindly gave me a copy of a very hard-to-find lecture by Hobart Bosworth that proved to be an indispensable source for chapter 3 in particular.

I owe thanks to numerous other librarians, experts, and archivists on both sides of the country, including Jenny Romero and Louise Hilton of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Margaret Herrick Library; Jon Klusmire, director, and Roberta Harlan, curator of Collections & Exhibits, at the Eastern California Museum in Independence, California; Bob Sigman, director, and Catherine Kravitz, collections manager, at the Lone Pine Film History Museum in the Owens Valley (thanks, too, to museum volunteer Maria Carillo); Robert Vaughn of the American Film Institute’s Louis B. Mayer Library in L.A.; David H. Lawrence and Seth Goldman of the Neversink Valley Museum in Cuddebackville, New York; Ashley Swinnerton of the Museum of Modern Art’s Film Study Center in New York City; and the staffs of the History Department at the Los Angeles Central Library, the USC libraries, and the Special Collections Department of the Oviatt Library at Cal State Northridge. (Thanks are due as well to those who, for one reason or another, prefer to remain anonymous.) As always, the University of Maryland’s library collections were a godsend to an unaffiliated scholar from the community; I want to particularly thank the staffs of the McKeldin Library and the Hornbake Library’s Media Services Department (where I spent many happy hours watching DVDs, VideoDiscs, and even VHS tapes of countless silent films). A special thank-you also goes to Deborah Bull, for her excellent assistance on picture research for the book.

For helping me feel at home in the city when I wasn’t rooting around in libraries and archives, I’d like to give a shout-out to the West Coast friends who were always willing to meet up for a meal: the Natas Pastries posse of Jill Baer, Ken Blackwell, and Denis de Boisblanc; Ellie Baer and Terry Barge (when they weren’t on the other side of the Pond); David Dunbar and Alison Brower; Gerd Ludwig; Mark Wexler; and, in La Jolla, Lisa Lytton and Tony Shugaar. Special thanks go to Lynell George, who played the double role of welcoming friend and resident expert. Lynell, an L.A.-born and -raised writer with New Orleans family roots who just happened to review my last book for the Chicago Tribune, was someone I clearly had to meet, given that those three cities were the subjects of my three most recent books. This urban trifecta aside, Lynell turned out to be both a fount of local knowledge and a delightful tour guide and dinner companion. I don’t make a habit of seeking out the people who review me (even the ones who say nice things), but I am very happy to now have Lynell as a friend.

Two East Coast compadres deserve thanks as well: Dennis Drabelle, who lent me a dozen or so volumes from his impressive collection of books on early Hollywood (you’ll get them back soon, Denny!), and my longtime pal Lisa Zeidner, who once again agreed to read the entire manuscript with an eye to ironing out the assorted tics and idiosyncrasies of my prose.

This is my third book with Crown Publishers, but somehow—because of the vagaries of the publishing industry—I have yet to finish one with the same editor I started with. (As Lady Bracknell might say, “To lose one editor may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose three looks like carelessness.”) And yet it has all worked out beautifully, probably because the editors I’ve inherited have invariably turned out to be as terrific as the ones I lost. So while I was heartbroken when the wonderful Domenica Alioto left the company two years into this project, I was delighted when the marvelous Meghan Houser stepped in to pick up where Domenica left off; Meghan has proven to be a superb editor and an insightful, hardworking collaborator. Thanks this time also go to Crown’s deep marketing, production, and design bench of Becca Putnam, Robert Siek, Jessica Heim, Elina Nudelman, and Elena Giavaldi. Meanwhile, to provide continuity through all three books, I’ve had a staunchly supportive publisher in Molly Stern and a great and energetic publicist in Dyana Messina. I’m also incredibly lucky to have the best agent in the business—Eric Simonoff at William Morris Endeavor—as my representative and friend.

Finally, as always, I want to thank my wife, Elizabeth Cheng, and our daughter, Anna Krist—who are the sine qua non of my existence.