STACK #156 Oct 2017

FEATURE EXTRAS

Wilder’s first project at Columbia fell through, due primarily to his poor English, which prompted him to take a crash course in the language by continually reading newspapers and listening to the radio in his room. Eventually he became a collaborative writer at Paramount, the studio with which he had his longest association. As Wilder’s fortunes improved as a scriptwriter and film director, his suites at the Marmont became larger and grander. When he moved into his sixth floor apartment, he now had a magnificent view of the Sunset Strip thoroughfare Director Lloyd Bacon moved into the Chateau Marmont in 1937. Contracted to Warner Bros., his films included The Singing Fool (1928, 42nd Street  (1933) and Gold Diggers of 1937 (1936). Bacon was a party animal and every weekend he played host to his movie pals in his penthouse at the Marmont. His guest list was a veritable 'who's who' of 1930s Hollywood. Amongst the many revellers were Richard Barthlemess, Joan Blondell, The Ritz Brothers, Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Stan Laurel, Dick Powell and Bebe Daniels. The journalist and part-time actor Robert Benchley (grandfather of Jaws author Peter Benchley) was another regular attendee. Benchley lived directly across from the Marmont in the Garden of Allah apartments. Famously petrified of traffic on Sunset Boulevard, he would hail a taxi just to get him across the street to attend Bacon’s parties. The Marmont’s reputation for discreet handling of movie celebrities, providing them with the utmost privacy, attracted many of Hollywood’s glitterati. When stars wanted to be seen they went to the Beverly Hills Hotel. When they wanted to keep out of the limelight, they stayed at the Marmont. The underground car-park had lifts that led directly to all the hotel floors, so no one could see who was on the arm of a famous actor. Some stayed for just a week while others made it their permanent home. Famous recluse Greta Garbo, who loved the hotel’s quiet solitude, regularly checked in, always under the name of Harriet Brown. Samuel (Billy) Wilder, who moved into the Marmont in 1934 below which gave him the initial inspiration for his classic movie,  Sunset Boulevard  (1950).

Traffic on Sunset Boulevard in the 1930s. The Garden of Allah apartments are on the left. Robert Benchley would hail a taxi to get across the road to the Chateau Marmont on the right to attend Lloyd Bacon’s party

Party animal and director Lloyd Bacon, whose weekend parties at the Marmont became the must-go-to event in 1930s Hollywood

So too did Howard Hughes, Hedy Lamarr and Boris Karloff. Head of Columbia Pictures, Harry Cohn, rented Suite 54 as an insurance policy for his wayward young actors' romantic dalliances. He wanted to ensure that their wild behaviour was kept within the confines of the Marmont and not in the gossip columns. The hotel also became a bolthole for errant movie husbands. Both Errol Flynn and Humphrey Bogart hid out there from their volatile wives whilst courting new lovers whom they later married. Throughout the 1940s the Marmont became a retreat for countless movie legends, from Bette Davis to Orson Welles. Following the success of  Stagecoach (the film that made him a star), John Wayne booked himself into a penthouse at the Marmont stating, “I just wanna see how it feels to live like a star”– and he did for several weeks. In the 1950s the Chateau Marmont became the West Coast headquarters for alumni from

A bespectacled James Dean in 1955

the New York Actors Studio. So-called method acting movies such as A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and On the Waterfront (1954) had taken Hollywood by storm. One morning in early 1955, a sullen bespectacled young man appeared at the Marmont’s reception desk and asked for director Nicholas Ray’s apartment. Guest privacy was always a core value of the hotel, so he was asked what business he had with Mr. Ray. He replied that he was reading for a part in the director’s next movie. When asked for his name he mumbled, “Jimmy Dean”.

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To be continued...

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