The Roosevelt may not attract as much attention as its glitzier neighbors, but it should. The very first Academy Awards (then called “Merit Awards”) were handed out in the hotel’s ballroom in 1929. Presiding over the western-most end of Hollywood Boulevard, the hotel is a melange of architectural styles that only Hollywood could provide. It’s golden-hued stucco exterior is adorned with fleur-de-lis, imposing Grecian urns and a red Spanish tile roof. Inside, the hotel becomes a Moorish courtyard, complete with wrought-iron balconies, painted wooden beams and decorative tile work on the floor and walls. Climb the stairs to a second level, and you’re surrounded by memorabilia from Hollywood in the 1920s. Outside, the bungalows surrounding the palm-tree-shaded pool are pure Rat Pack. (A famed David Hockney design on the bottom of the pool is currently being restored.)
One recent day, a peek into the hotel’s famed Blossom Room was like stepping into a time machine. Inside the Spanish-style banquet hall, dozens of men and women milled about in their Sunday best. A Sunday in 1960, that is. The room’s occupants were screen extras, awaiting a cue from director Steven Spielberg to step before the cameras. A few feet from the door, Spielberg was engrossed in conversation with the film’s stars, Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio. They were there to shoot a scene from a new movie, “Catch Me If You Can.” Johnny Grant, Los Angeles’s “Honorary Mayor of Hollywood,” who’s credited with inventing the Walk of Fame, and a 12-year resident of the Roosevelt, stood nearby, watching. “It doesn’t get much better than this,” he said. “You’re in the center of Hollywood history. The things you would know if these walls could talk!”
Well, maybe the walls can’t talk, but many believe the halls are haunted. Marilyn Monroe lived in the Hollywood Roosevelt for two years in a room near the pool. “People feel a cold spot inside the Blossom Room, which they attribute to Marilyn,” says Hollywood Roosevelt general manager Sam Cole. And there’s a mirror hanging near an elevator bank that used to be in Monroe’s room. “Over the years, there have been numerous alleged Marilyn sightings in the mirror,” Cole says.
It’s not unusual for guests making reservations to request the Marilyn Monroe room, number 246, or the Montgomery Clift room, number 936. But the most popular request is for the third-floor suite where Clark Gable and Carole Lombard carried on a torrid affair during the 1930s. The “Gable and Lombard Suite” is a multi-level corner expanse with a dining area, living room and full bar downstairs. Upstairs, there’s a bedroom with an immense, five-sided cupola supported by exposed wooden beams. A stairway near the bedroom leads to a private rooftop terrace, with a resplendent view of the entire Los Angeles basin, from the hills of Hollywood to the towers of downtown to the blue Pacific. “This was all mostly strawberry fields in Gable and Lombard’s day,” notes Cole.
The television program “Entertainment Tonight” will take over the Gable and Lombard suite for its Oscar night show. And that night the hotel plans to host what it hopes will become a new Hollywood tradition: an Oscar-watching banquet complete with a big screen TV set up in the Blossom Room. “We have a big marquis outside that says ‘The Oscars are coming home to Hollywood. Come watch with us’,” Cole says.
Maybe he’ll have a few ghosts joining the party.
