I Stayed in Charlie Chaplins Den of Debauchery Outside of L.A.
“Charlie Chaplin built this staircase himself,” the campground host tells me, pointing up toward a rickety assemblage of logs and twigs inside my cabin. “It’s where his mistresses would run up and escape out the back window if his wife was coming up the hill.” I’ve been on many accommodation tours in my life, but I have never encountered such a tawdry description. I’m used to being told how to close the electronic curtains, not how to hide an extramarital affair.
The seedy detail is part of the allure of staying in the one-and-only Charlie Chaplin cabin at Huttopia Paradise Springs, a bucolic glamping compound nearly 90 miles from Hollywood in Angeles National Forest. After extensive renovations, the one-bedroom, one-bathroom cabin began welcoming guests in May 2024, offering a unique experience compared to the other available accommodations: 71 wood-and-canvas tents.
While the French hospitality company’s yurts boast mattress-topped beds and decks with barbecues, the Chaplin cabin provides extra amenities like a well-equipped kitchen, outdoor hot tub, and, well, solid walls. They’re all way more fabulous than the nylon nightmares I was forced to sleep in as a Boy Scout. The true charm of staying there, of course, is the history. The cabin and the entirety of Paradise Springs are teeming with juicy Hollywood mythology.
Courtesy of Huttopia
Throughout the 1920s and ‘30s, the woodsy retreat served as a debaucherous Prohibition-era destination where stars of the time and anyone else who could afford it enjoyed bootleg hooch, wild dance parties, illegal gambling, and lots of sex. Paradise Springs, named by actress Gloria Swanson, was like a more rustic counterpart to Hearst Castle, the towering mansion built by media magnate William Randolph Hearst on top of a hill in San Simeon.
Originally inhabited by the Serrano people, the San Gabriel Mountains region where Paradise Springs sits is surprisingly majestic for being so close to the madness of Los Angeles. Surrounded by rocky cliffs and outcroppings, massive oaks and evergreens as well as sycamore, alder, and cottonwood trees dot the landscape. Strands of fresh spring water flow out of the mountains before dipping into the ground or out to the ocean.
I can’t personally say I’m a huge Chaplin aficionado. I’m familiar with his iconic character, the waddling, mustached Tramp. Who isn’t? I’ve probably seen a handful of his films on Turner Classic Movies. I know the man himself wasn’t the greatest guy ever from watching the underrated 1992 biopic Chaplin starring Robert Downey Jr. However, Chaplin’s impact on cinema is undeniable. He was a visionary who helped catapult filmmaking to another level.
While lounging in the Chaplin cabin my first night, I picked up Justin Chapman’s well-researched account of Paradise Springs that I found on the coffee table. I was surprised that such a hedonistic hub wasn’t more well-known or depicted in films like Mank or Babylon. The real-life tales were wild. Apparently, during a particularly bonkers altercation in the ‘20s, a buffalo from Paradise Springs’ on-site zoo was shot in the middle of the ballroom. Ah, Old Hollywood.
Courtesy of Huttopia
It turns out the Chaplin cabin moniker is a bit of a misnomer. While the silent film legend frequently stayed there, it actually belonged to actor Noah Beery, who rose to fame on the vaudeville circuit before heading to Hollywood with his younger brother Wallace (who would go on to win a Best Actor Oscar for The Champ at the Academy Awards in 1931). The brothers had contracts with the likes of Paramount and MGM. Noah typically played villains in silent films.
The Missouri-born brothers, financially backed by well-heeled luminaries like Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Will Rogers, bought the 165-acre parcel of land in Fenner Canyon from Pasadena attorney Louis Luckel. With a vision of transforming it into the ultimate escape for the Tinseltown elite, they constructed several cabins, an Olympic-size pool, and a ballroom featuring a stage large enough for a 22-piece orchestra and a dance floor where buffalo could roam.
Courtesy of Huttopia
In 2017, Huttopia—already popular in Europe—purchased the property, which ironically served as a sin-free Christian camp in the decades after the Beery brothers ran out of cash. Huttopia owners Céline and Philippe Bossanne were intrigued by both the land’s natural beauty and compelling backstory. Huttopia Paradise Springs officially opened in 2021 and has been expanding with more tents and amenities each season. The Chaplin cabin is its latest addition.
“It’s definitely our most unique accommodation in the world,” Margaux Bossanne, Huttopia’s brand and business manager (and daughter of Huttopia founders Céline and Philippe Bossanne) later told me on the phone. “We don’t typically have existing accommodations on site. Most of them are built by us. It’s rare we move into a space and there’s already a cabin that’s there, and it’s even rarer that it would have a connection to Old Hollywood.”
Unlike the teetering-on-the-edge abode depicted in The Gold Rush, this Chaplin cabin is a sturdy masterpiece. After a flood destroyed most of the property in 1938 but left the cabin intact, the structure became affectionately known as Noah’s Ark. Despite modern amenities, I was constantly reminded during my stay that I was indeed in nature. Other than a bedroom fan, there was no air conditioning. And several bugs, including a beautiful beetle, paid me a visit.
The cabin remains surrounded by the same man-made trout ponds constructed by the Beerys, who sold the fish back in the day to L.A. restaurants for hefty sums. For me, the waterfall-like aqueduct system of the interconnected ponds provided a cascading sense of calm right outside the cabin’s windows. The campground host told me that they were restocked last year with fresh fish, and they seem to be thriving from what I could glimpse through the murky waters.
With throwback furnishings, the Chaplin cabin’s interior design maintains both an old-school whimsy and Huttopia’s ethos of balancing comfy conveniences with outdoorsy sensibilities. There are scads of books on Chaplin, old Paradise Springs photos, and Chaplin posters. Unfortunately, out of safety, the wobbly staircase and second-level access have been cordoned off with a cheeky sign: DO NOT CLIMB STEP — EVEN IF YOU BROUGHT YOUR MISTRESS.
“Maybe it’s our French sensibility,” Bossanne answered when I asked her why they embraced the raffishness. “We wanted to respect the site’s heritage [and] share the story of the history of the place because it’s so unique and interesting. We did not want it to go to waste. We could have used it as an administrative building or something like that, but that would have been boring — even the sign is, like we say in France, a clin d’œil — a wink. If you know, you know.”
After a restful first night, I ventured to the main lodge for coffee and a croissant. “How was zee Chaplain cabin?” one of the French-speaking hosts asked me. “Did you have any special encounterz last night?” I paused, wondering if she was referring to ghosts or orgies. “I did hear something tip-toeing above me!” I responded, stopping short of revealing my theory that the noise came from a mouse. I’d seen one scurry away when I first arrived.
During my July visit, Huttopia Paradise Springs was riddled with families. As a childless adult, I would’ve much rather been bombarded by drunken wannabe starlets and or a rogue bison. Still, despite the screaming kids, the colder-than-old pool where Tarzan actor Johnny Weissmuller once trained for the Olympics offered a welcome respite. After a dip, I went up to the bistro for a made-to-order pizza topped with pancetta and pesto. It did not taste like an old leather shoe.
While various fires and floods have destroyed much of what was built at Paradise Springs over the decades, the Huttopia owners have worked to preserve what remains, including the spring-fed pool, kitchen building, and Chaplin cabin as well as another cabin that now serves as a reading and game room. They’ve also added communal activities like lawn games, yoga sessions, and outdoor movies. (Appropriately, Ratatouille was on the bill during my visit.)
Huttopia offers similar “glamping experiences” (really, it’s just camping for people who don’t camp often) in U.S. destinations like New York, Maine, and New Hampshire. Last year, they opened their second location in California: Huttopia Wine Country in Lake County. A few of their properties around the world offer variations on the yurt-style accommodations, but there’s nothing like staying in the cabin where America’s first womanizing movie star laid his head.
Charlie Chaplin as the Tramp.Public domain/Wikimedia Commons
After the sun set on my last night, I pulled out my laptop and played Modern Times, my fave Chaplin flick. It’s the one where he’s sucked into a giant machine. There is electricity but no Wi-Fi in the cabin, so I downloaded stuff ahead of time. I started dozing off at the part where his love interest is introduced then switched over to the 2021 documentary The Real Charlie Chaplin, which offers a new perspective on the man who ascended from poverty to celebrity.
A stay in the Chaplin cabin won’t come cheap. The price was $650 a night during my visit. Unless you’re a die-hard megafan of the Tramp, Paradise Springs’ tented options starting at $170 a night (without a private bathroom) are far more reasonable. Initially, I thought that staying in the cozy Chaplin cabin for a weekend might elicit some sort of metaphysical creative inspiration from the pockets of cinematic genius still lingering in the stone and wood.
Instead, I mostly just felt hot and sticky—but also calm and content. There’s nothing quite like immersing yourself in nature. It was nice to simply disconnect, listen to the trickle of water, hike a bit outside the property, read some books, and drink a little gin, Chaplin’s preferred booze. I think getting away from it all is truly why Chaplin and his Old Hollywood pals made regular visits to this special chunk of Southern California. Oh, and to fool around with their mistresses.
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