Humphrey Bogart and his friends loved California’s Newport Beach, and from the water, it is still easy to understand why.

Visitors to Newport Beach today might know the coastal Southern California city from “The Real Housewives,” “The O.C.” and “Arrested Development,” all of which were set amid its rolling green hills and picture-perfect beaches. But I had come to Newport Beach to commune with the stars of Old Hollywood, who began staking their claim to this idyllic spot just one hour south of Los Angeles during the silent film era.

In the Golden Age of Hollywood, Newport Beach’s lure was not so much its land, dotted as it was with big-band ballrooms and smoke-filled cocktail bars. It was its water, and specifically the sprawling recreational harbor where the stars docked their yachts and sailboats.

“These guys treasured their privacy,” Bob Verini, the Hollywood historian, said of the members of the original Rat Pack, which predated that eponymous 1960s gang of stars and included Humphrey Bogart as ringleader and Judy Garland, Cary Grant and Spencer Tracy as devotees. “There was no privacy in Hollywood. But when they got on the water and beyond the three-mile limit, out there, they could drop all the pretense and be their authentic selves.”