‘Old Hollywood’ Beckons
But for How Long?
Exploring Old Hollywood transports you through decades of film and stardom. Writer Alan Pell Crawford spotlights the highlights, tailored for baby boomers.
I’m in the lobby bar at the Roosevelt Hotel – one of eight restaurants in this swank old Los Angeles institution – and no, I have not yet seen the ghost of Marilyn Monroe. She is said to haunt the place, as, apparently, do the ghosts of Errol Flynn and Montgomery Clift. I have not laid eyes on any of them, but serve me one or two more of the Roosevelt’s L.A. Palms – one of its signature cocktails – and my vision might improve.
Built in 1926, with funds supplied by, among others, Louis B. Mayer, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, the 12-story Roosevelt is located on Hollywood Boulevard. It’s on the Walk of Fame, just across the street from Grauman’s Chinese Theater, which opened with Cecil B. DeMille’s “King of Kings” in 1927.
The first Academy Awards ceremony, hosted by Fairbanks, took place at the Roosevelt in 1929. The Gable-Lombard penthouse is said to offer a superb view of the famous HOLLYWOOD sign, though most of us will never know. Clark Gable and Carol Lombard stayed in the rooftop room for $5 a night, but I suspect the rates have since gone up. Charlie Chaplin stayed at the Roosevelt, as did Mary Martin and – in our own day – Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
No place says Golden Age of Hollywood quite like the Roosevelt, and with the passage of time, fewer and fewer places evoking that vibe remain. One is Musso & Frank Grill a few blocks east on Hollywood Boulevard, which dates to 1919. GQ once proclaimed it the best place to have a martini in America, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, who spent a few years writing screenplays at MGM, would no doubt have agreed.
Ernest Hemingway hung out at Musso & Frank, as did Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, Greta Garbo and Frank Sinatra, whose favorite booth the amiable staff is only too happy to show you. Scenes in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood” were filmed here, with Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Pacino enjoying the ambiance. (Pitt’s character lives in a run-down mobile home on the beach at Malibu just as James Garner’s did in “The Rockford Files.” A coincidence?)
Then there’s the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard, which also opened in 1929 and is still the location for films and television. It was in Bungalow 3 in 1982 that John Belushi died, which might seem too conveniently symbolic for a movie business struggling desperately to remain relevant in a vastly changing media environment. More and more movies are made elsewhere, and parts of Los Angeles, with the homelessness that afflicts all big cities, can look seedier than the tourist might expect.
A worrisome New York Times report in December – “On Your Left, Hollywood’s Fading Relevancy” – explored the plight of studio tours such as that offered by Paramount Pictures, where you can see a park bench Tom Hanks sat on in “Forrest Gump.” Whoopee!
To be fair, Hollywood has been in a “state of constant change and perpetual crisis” since the film industry’s beginning, writes Peter Decherney, a University of Pennsylvania professor of cinema studies. “There is always a new technology, an independent film movement, or a global financial crisis on the horizon.” Somehow the studio system endures. “Hollywood’s like Egypt, full of crumbled pyramids. It’ll never come back. It’ll just keep on crumbling until finally the wind blows the last studio prop across the sands.” David O. Selznick said that – in 1951.
Finding Old Hollywood
Even in the event of an unanticipated revival of the Hollywood film industry, however, old landmarks will still disappear. That’s why it is important to enjoy them while you can. Fortunately, with a little guidance, that is not as difficult as it might seem.
What most of us think of as Los Angeles is a sprawling metropolis of 19 million people, covering almost 500 square miles, with terrain that is as varied as it is pleasing to the eye. There are beaches and valleys and mountains, public parks, wide boulevards, freeways and ethnic neighborhoods.
There’s Chinatown, for instance, conjured up for the big screen by Roman Polanski in his 1974 thriller starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. Each of these neighborhoods has its own charm – and challenges.
Hollywood, of course, is a kind of metaphor, and anyone eager to see what is left of its Golden Age will need to cruise up and down those freeways, well beyond the city limits, strictly speaking. The scenery is mostly pleasant wherever you look, so getting there can be part of the fun.
So, where to begin? You should not miss the Roosevelt or Musso & Frank, for dinner or drinks, or El Coyote, more about which in a moment. But also take in the stars – the ones in the sidewalk – up and down Hollywood Boulevard. There are almost 3,000 of them, and even Rin Tin Tin and Lassie have their stars. There are Homes of the Stars bus tours as well as golfcart-equipped studio tours like Paramount’s, but DIY types, who like to set their own schedules, will have to use a little more ingenuity.
For starters, about six miles northeast of Hollywood is Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, one of three such Forest Lawn cemeteries. This is the oldest, dating to 1906 – and most worth a visit. This is the final resting place, as they say, for Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart, Nat King Cole, Elizabeth Taylor, and many others, including the Three Stooges, though it is difficult imaging the Three Stooges “at rest.” Pleasant roadways weave their way through the property, with views of the Hollywood Hills in the distance.
About five miles west of Forest Lawn is Griffith Park. At the easternmost edge of the Santa Monica Mountains, this 4,300-acre “urban wilderness” is in fact surprisingly tourist-friendly. There’s a perfectly manageable walkway to the top, where the Griffith Park Observatory is located – and with what are said to be the best views of the HOLLYWOOD sign anywhere. Eleven hundred feet above sea level, it’s a healthy hike.
For a more relaxing, but no less visually stunning outing, take a boat ride from Long Beach to Catalina Island. Your destination is some 25 miles from shore, and the ferry usually takes about an hour, which allows plenty of time to gaze at the California coastline and, just maybe, catch a glimpse of dolphins.
Avalon is on Catalina Island, and you can linger for much of the day at its beaches, restaurants and shops, much as Monroe, Chaplin and Gable did in their day. Monroe – then Norma Jean Doughtery – lived here with her first husband. (One write-up says Natalie Wood “enjoyed” Catalina, which requires some elaboration. It was in 1981, on a cruise there on Splendour, a yacht she and husband Robert Wagner owned, that she went overboard and drowned.)
For really Old Hollywood, you can’t beat the La Brea Tar Pits in swank Hancock Park. This is where, about 13,000 years ago, Ice Age mammoths, ground sloths and other furry beasts got trapped and swallowed up by the bubbling tar. Especially unfortunate ones sank below the surface while saber-toothed tigers, perched on their backs, dined on their flesh; the saber-tooths went down, as it were, with the ship.
Some of the pits are still there, with life-size models of the unsuspecting mammals trying to drink at the shoreline and finding themselves pulled to their doom. The George C. Page Museum displays fossil skeletons and hundreds, if not thousands, of other artifacts, intelligently displayed.
More dining options
By now, you have probably worked up an appetite of your own, and there is no shortage of options throughout Greater Los Angeles. The ethnic neighborhoods – Koreatown, Little Tokyo and others – means there is “authentic” cuisine wherever you turn. The original Brown Derby, on Wilshire Boulevard, where Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz would go to gawk at movie stars, closed in the 1980s.
While the Roosevelt and Musso & Frank have been favorites for a century, El Coyote, which opened in 1931, is not far behind. Serving Mexican fare in a festive, unpretentious atmosphere, it remains popular with locals as well as Tinseltown celebrities. Tony Curtis was a regular, and Harrison Ford and David Lynch have been spotted enjoying the atmosphere. It was here in August of 1969 that actress Sharon Tate and three friends enjoyed a carefree meal before heading back to the home Tate owned with film director Polanski just outside Beverly Hills.
Later that night, of course, all of them were murdered by members of the so-called Manson family, a crime revisited – and reimagined – in Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time,” with Margot Robbie playing Sharon Tate. Tourists want to see the table where she and her party had their last meal, and the agreeable waitstaff will happily point it out.
El Coyote is a lively spot, and when Alison Martino wrote it up a few years back for the foodie website Resy, Jane Fonda – waiting for her to-go order – overheard Martino’s conversation with her friends, said, “You look like a fun group, Can I join you?” and did so. “Only at El Coyote,” Martino wrote, “can you randomly have drinks with a legend.”
That’s not really true, of course. There are plenty of other places around town where this can happen, as long as you are there when the occasion presents itself. They don’t call Hollywood a “dream factory” for nothing.
The Roosevelt Hotel
7000 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90028
Thehollywoodroosevelt.com
323.785.7000
Musso & Frank Grill
6667 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90028
Mussoandfrank.com
323.467.7788
The Chateau Marmont
8221 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90046
Chateaumarmont.com
323.656.1010
El Coyote Café
7312 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
Elcoyotecafe.com
323.939.2255
Forest Lawn Memorial Park
1712 Glendale Avenue
Glendale, CA 91205
1.888.204.3131
La Brea Tarpits & Museum
5801 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
Tarpits.org
213.763.3466
Griffith Observatory
2800 E. Observatory Rd.
Los Angeles, CA 90027
Griffithobservatory.org
213.473.0800
Paramount Pictures Studio Tour
5515 Melrose Avenue
Hollywood, CA 90038
Paramountstudiotour.com
323.956.1777
