When Halston turned up for the Academy Awards one year, to serve as actress Marisa Berenson’s walker, the hotel refused to check him in unless he used his first name. According to Sandra Lee Stuart, author of The Pink Palace (1978), a long out-of-print exposé of goings-on at the hotel, Estée Lauder was humbled by a maid she’d been routinely rude to: “You sleep in this room with your husband and that room with your boyfriend!” screamed the maid, according to Stuart’s sources. Mitchell, heard the news mid-supper at the Polo Lounge and began shouting at the top of his voice: “Son of a bitch! They blew it! They blew it!” The next day he calmly stood in front of the world’s press and denied the Watergate burglar’s links to Nixon. When Watergate hit the fan in 1972, Nixon’s campaign manager, John N. Such is the power of LA’s PR machine that the truly good stories have probably never come to light, but there are a few gems in the public domain. Barry Manilow insists on one particular piano being installed in whichever room he’s in, Morrissey is a regular in the Polo Lounge and announced his comeback here (he’s a fan of the pink T-shirts from the gift shop, apparently) and John Travolta may or may not like a happy ending with any on-site massage that he may or may not have been in town for at any given time. Howard Hughes, at the height of his insanity, took umpteen bungalows, suites and rooms for himself and his eight Mormon bodyguards. Gore Vidal’s mother lived here for a spell, while Vidal himself drank through some of his final days in the bar. If these walls could talk… they’d whisper about Liz Taylor’s many honeymoons, Lord Snowdon and Princess Margaret’s secret getaway routes to go partying in the Hollywood Hills, and Marilyn Monroe’s affair with Yves Montand. Outside, by the much-photographed pool, agents and assistants of assistants jabber into iPhones at battery-defying length, while the 1% of the 1% make their way to their bungalows along leafy winding pathways that whisper of illicit affairs. “They have the freshest of everything, the waiters know everyone and I usually meet people I know.” A customer once famously complained about his bill: “This is the most expensive coffee shop in the world!” The waiter raised an eyebrow and replied: “I should hope so, Sir.” “It’s the only place like it in the world,” says Mr Chow, who brunches there with his family on many weekends. American Graffiti, perhaps, with a supporting cast of pinstriped men with suspiciously dark hair, clutching copies of Variety. Down in that Coffee Room, with its decorous wrought-iron seating bolted into the floor around architect Paul Revere Williams’ curved counter, the filter coffee, fluorescent Key lime pie and eggs Benedict with candy-sweet ham keep coming. No one’s star-spotting, because to do so would be to blow cover as an outsider. On our last visit, Jodie Foster rocked up for breakfast at the Fountain Coffee Room and hopped on a stool next to us. Still, it feels like Grand Old Hollywood rather than The Golden Girls. All that pink and those tropical fronds on the wallpaper are borderline kitsch. While there are ongoing, nay never-ending, room refurbishments underway, there’s nothing aggressively contemporary about the milieu of the Beverly Hills Hotel. If you’re not in recovery (yet), it’s martinis all round.
This is a world of jam on jam, luxury on luxury, Elnett armour and big film business. Double-chopped McCarthy salads, essentially a Cobb with attitude, are tossed tableside while the carb-avoidant try to resist the softest, most delicious bread in the basket – the one with the delicate blue cheese imbedded in it. Impossibly wealthy moguls in polo shirts sip iced tea in the shade. A Nancy Reagan-alike hobbles to a corner booth on what look like Bottega Veneta intrecciato leather crutches. There are real diamonds, big hats and theatrical Maybelline pouts. In this partially alfresco, entirely radiant destination dining spot at the heart of the Beverly Hills Hotel, God is in the details, from the waitress noting your penchant for noir apparel, to the conspicuously nonexistent lines on the faces of some of Hollywood’s most elegantly desiccated faces.
“Is the white napkin OK, or should I bring a black one?” If there’s a Heaven, everything in it will be like lunch at the Polo Lounge.
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