The Beverly Hills Hotel is a legendary locale with a long history of Hollywood glitz and glamor. A kaleidoscope where celebrities mesh into a mosaic of refinement and wealth, washed down with champagne.
Some of the long-gone features that existed at this luxurious 208 room hotel, which sits on 12 acres, include stables for guests’ horses, a school, a movie theatre, a billiard room, and a bowling alley. Fox hunts which were staged in nearby barren hills are also a distant memory from a different time.
“Back in the days when celebrity was worn with the elegance and grace of diamonds and mink, the Beverly Hills Hotel was where the stars played. W.C. Fields, Humphrey Bogart and the Rat Pack tippled at the bar, Katharine Hepburn did a back flip into the pool in her tennis clothes, and Elizabeth Taylor honeymooned in the bungalows out back – six times. The Beverly Hills Hotel, known affectionately as “the pink palace,” is as Old Hollywood as it gets.”
– CNN
The Creation of Beverly Hills and the Beverly Hills Hotel
The history of the Beverly Hills Hotel begins with Burton Green. Green was an oil tycoon that had bought up a bunch of land in 1900 with his business partners. He subsequently set up some wells just outside Los Angeles.
When the wells struck water instead of oil, the enterprise changed its name from the Amalgated Oil Company to the Rodeo Land and Water Company. Green came up with the idea to sell the land as part of a new town and name it “Beverly Hills” in honor of Beverly Farms, Massachusetts, which he had affection for.
Green would hire architects Wilbur David Cook and Myron Hunt who were to design the master plans of the city. Green invested $500,000 of his personal money into building mansions on this land, including his own. He ran into a problem though, as the supply outweighed demand, which resulted in considerable difficulty in selling these homes.
In the early months of 1911, Green devised a plan. He contacted Margaret Jane Anderson, who managed the Hollywood Hotel, and was embroiled in a contentious monetary-based feud with that establishment’s owner, Almira Parker Hershey.
Green made Anderson an offer for her to build a hotel (named “Beverly Farms”) as part of this new development. Her son Stanley J. Anderson was brought on in order to help her accomplish this task. This would take over a year, and $500,000 to complete, with the aid of architect Elmer Grey.
“Elmer Grey designed the hotel in such a way so that every room got sunlight in one point of the day or another. An acre of land was set aside for the guests to grow vegetables and flowers while staying here, so they would feel at home. That acre of land now is probably worth $25 million.”
– Robert S. Anderson, Great Grandson of Margaret Anderson
Margaret Anderson got her revenge on Hershey when she announced that the Hollywood Hotel was closed to the guests staying there because she had resigned. Hence, there was no one to manage the hotel. She offered jobs to the staff, and rooms to the guests, which were accepted.
They moved in on April 30, 1912, and the hotel officially opened about 2 weeks later on May 12. When the hotel opened, the area was so sparsely populated that it would take nearly two more years before Beverly Hills would be incorporated as an independent city, which occurred in January 1914.
The Silent Era and Early Depression Years
By the time Beverly Hills was a full-fledged city, the Beverly Hills Hotel was growing in popularity with the movie star crowd. This included Harold Lloyd, who filmed a scene of his 1921 comedy A Sailor-Made Man at the hotel.
Stars such as Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Rudolph Valentino and others had purchased land nearby. This would go on to increase the already rising popularity of the newly minted luxury hotel.
In 1915, the hotel’s first five bungalows were built on the property. Silent movie great, and star of Sunset Boulevard, Gloria Swanson lived in one of the bungalows while her divorce was making its way through the courts in 1918.
Another thing that occurred that year was that the Anderson’s donated a portion of the land that made up the hotel’s ground. It was given to the city to be used as a park. The original name was Sunset Park. But was later changed to Will Rogers Memorial Park, which still exists over 100 years after its creation.
In 1928 the Beverly Hills Hotel was sold to the Interstate Company. Interstate decided to shutter the property in 1933 due to the financial hardships the Great Depression had on maintaining the massive property. The iconic hotel finally would reopen in January of 1934 under the new ownership of Bank of America.
The Hollywood Glamour Years
The true heyday of the Beverly Hills Hotel began once it reopened. In 1938, the hotel imported white sand from Arizona to create a beach-like illusion for the pool area’s Sand and Pool Club.
In 1939, Bank of America put Hernando Courtwright, bank vice president, in charge of the hotel. A couple of years later, Courtwright would go on to buy the hotel with his friends, Loretta Young, Irene Dunne, Harry Warner, and Joe Schnitzer. They would own the Beverly Hills Hotel for over a decade.
“Joan Crawford regularly pulled up for lunch in a chauffeured Rolls Royce the color of money, the Beatles slipped in through the back door for an after-hours dip in the pool, and Sidney Poitier danced barefoot in the lobby after winning an Oscar for Lilies of the Field.”
– CNN
Around this time, billionaire Howard Hughes would begin to stay in the bungalows. He would do so off and on for the next 30 years. His eccentric behavior during these decades included midnight treasure hunts for freshly baked pineapple upside-down cakes, hidden on the grounds. As well as retrieving roast beef sandwiches left for him by the staff in the nook of a tree.
“Every memory I have of the place that I want to share, I wouldn’t want to see in print.”
– Robert Evans, Former head of production at Paramount
The Polo Lounge
Courtwright was at the forefront of making renovations to the property throughout the 1940s. The earliest of which was the Polo Lounge, one of the premier Los Angeles restaurants. The lounge was known for binge drinking sessions by the Rat Pack. Led by Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra.
Another interesting detail about the legendary Polo Lounge is that German actress Marlene Dietrich lobbied to successfully change the longstanding and archaic policy that women were not allowed to wear slacks on premises.
In 1948, Courtwright had the property painted pink, which was the en vogue color for country clubs at the time. In 1949, he hired renowned African American architect Paul Williams added the Crescent Wing to the property.
Superstardom and Royalty
Right after these renovations, the Beverly Hills Hotel took off into the stratosphere. Royalty including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Princess Margaret, and Lord Snowdon, King Albert of Belgium, the Crown Prince of Monaco, and Grace Kelly all stayed at the hotel.
Elizabeth Taylor, whose father owned the art gallery in the hotel’s lobby, had spent six of her eight honeymoons at the famed hotel. Clark Gable and Carole Lombard met here in the early days of their affair. So did Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. Marilyn Monroe, Arthur Miller, and Yves Montand stayed at the hotel during the production of George Cukor’s Let’s Make Love (1960).
Notable movies that were filmed at the Beverly Hills Hotel include Designing Woman (1957) starring Gregory Peck and Lauren Bacall. Who’s Been Sleeping in My Bed? (1963) with Carol Burnett, Dean Martin, and Elizabeth Montgomery. As well as California Suite (1978) featuring Michael Caine and Richard Pryor.
The movie Network (1976) has two famous connections to the hotel. Actor Peter Finch died of a heart attack while sitting in the lobby in January 1977. Also, actress Faye Dunaway stayed there the night she won the Best Actress Academy Award (Finch won the Best Actor trophy posthumously). This was displayed in one of the most iconic Hollywood photoshoots of all time, with photographer Terry O’Neil.
Modern Era
In 1979, Ben L Silberstein, who had bought the hotel in 1954 for $5.5 million, died. Due to criminal charges revolving around insider trading, Silberstein’s daughter Seema Boesky sold the hotel. It was purchased by movie and oil executive Marvin Davis in 1986 for $136 million in cash.
Davis subsequently turned around and re-sold it to the Sultan of Brunei for $110 million a year later. In 1996, the Beverly Hills Hotel had its ownership transferred to the Dorchester Collection, which said collection was created to manage the hotel interests of the Brunei Investment Agency.
In 2014, the hotel was beginning to get embroiled in an ongoing controversy. The controversy was involving Brunei’s legal treatment of homosexuals. Numerous celebrities have since boycotted the property. This including Ellen DeGeneres, Jay Leno, Elton John, and George Clooney.
In 2019, when Brunei implemented a new penal code that made gay sex punishable by death by stoning, the LA City Council passed a resolution to bar the city from conducting business at the hotel. It also urged city residents not to patronize it.
Despite these recent controversies surrounding the Beverly Hills Hotel and its ownership it continues to be an icon of Hollywood after over a century.
