The ghosts of old Hollywood remain
As the Oscars are handed out, Eric Volmers takes a look back at the stars of yesterday
Deep in the bowels of the Pantages Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard is a stuffy, modestly furnished office with no windows and a false ceiling.
It is a uniquely unimpressive room, particularly when compared to the lavish splendour of the historic theatre above it.
But it is historically relevant in its own way, especially if the topic is Hollywood ghosts. Which is why a group of international journalists were taken there on a guided tour prior to watching the musical Aladdin, riding a rickety service elevator to an area that is presumably rarely seen by the public. It used to be the private office of Howard Hughes. In 1949, he purchased what was then the 19-year-old theatre through his RKO Pictures. Hughes, of course, was the eccentric business magnate and film tycoon who eventually became the world’s most famous recluse. Under his watch, the Pantages became home to the Academy Awards throughout the glittery golden years of 1950 to 1959. He died in 1976.
“There was a rumour that when they built a metro they thought that Hughes had a tunnel built between here and the Taft Building because of the whole thing about him not wanting to go outside, that he would travel underneath,” explains John Sala, one of our tour guides. “They never found it. But they did find several weird passageways and they weren’t sure where they went because they were all boarded up.”
But this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to sensing Hughes’ spirit in the hallowed halls of the Pantages. He apparently makes his presence known in more tangible ways.
The fact that Hughes’ ghost is said to haunt the Pantages is old news. It’s even reported on the theatre’s website. But our group gets a much more personalized tale from the tour co-captain, an engineer with a long history at Pantages who nevertheless asked that his name not be used in the article.
He is not only a believer of this ghost story, but claims to have witnessed it first-hand. It was a few years back, when he was doing a routine check on the theatre’s second floor, which is where Hughes had his private quarters.
“As I got off the elevator, I looked to my left and there was a figure that had a fedora, long coat, a very lean looking gentleman,” our tour guide says. “I said ‘Nah’ and took two steps and I looked back and he was still standing there and he took some steps down the hallway.”
It’s not the only ghost story we’ll hear during our stay in Hollywood.
Roughly a month before La La Land’s biggest night, I was invited on an Oscar-themed tour of Los Angeles that took us to historic hotels and restaurants that still seem alive with Hollywood’s illustrious past.
Some ghosts are literal, or at least believed to be. Others are more figurative. But even in some of the newer establishments that are said to attract young stars and starlets, there seems to be a healthy respect for Hollywood’s golden years.
You would be hard-pressed to find a more historic landmark in Tinseltown than the Hollywood Roosevelt. Inside the 91-year-old hotel sits the Blossom Ballroom, which is where the first Academy Awards were held in 1929. You can still climb the lavish tile stairway where Mr. Bojangles reportedly first taught Shirley Temple how to tap dance. The 3,200 square-foot Gable Lombard Penthouse Suite is where early Hollywood power couple Clark Gable and Carole Lombard stayed for $5 a night prior to their 1939 marriage. Then there is the lovingly preserved Marilyn Suite, where blond bombshell Marilyn Monroe lived for a few years and where the group was invited to breakfast on the suite’s balcony overlooking the Tropicana Pool.
Monroe’s spirit is everywhere. The room is almost completely white and there’s a playful picture of her above the bed. But questions about the somewhat morbid rumours that Monroe’s sad ghost haunts a mirror that used to be in the suite did not yield a lot of information (Although, curiously, rumours that actor Montgomery Clift haunts the ninth floor mumbling lines from From Here To Eternity are included in the hotel’s official press material.) Apparently, Monroe’s haunted mirror still resides somewhere in the sprawling hotel.
“I don’t have much information about it, but yes that’s the rumour,” says sales co-ordinator and tour guide Bruno Bignozzi. “We do have some rumours that it’s a haunted hotel. I’ve never seen anything and I’m here every day.”
Not all of the tour was dedicated to old Hollywood. Among the hot spots we ate at was the Chateau Marmont. The iconic Sunset Boulevard restaurant and hotel was built in the 1920s, so is not lacking in Hollywood history in its own right. Everyone from Roman Polanski to Jim Morrison and Lana Del Rey have lived there; John Belushi died there. But it is also a hot spot for young Hollywood and a great place for star gazing, although being too obvious about it or taking pictures is definitely frowned upon. Our group’s celebrity expert from Australia informed us that actress Emma Roberts — niece of Julia — was among a chattering mob of impossibly good-looking actors and models sitting across from us in the garden terrace restaurant.
But it’s Lono, a newly opened hot spot on Hollywood Boulevard, that perhaps best represents a new bridge to old Hollywood. It also reportedly attracts young stars, and long lineups, to its doors. But it was inspired by the tiki bars and culture that flourished during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Among the more interesting decor is a display case featuring replicas of the personalized bamboo chopstick holders that were kept on display for the famous regulars at Don the Beachcomber, the bar/restaurant brainchild of former prohibition bootlegger Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt that kick-started the tiki craze in Hollywood. Everyone from Clark Gable to Joan Crawford had the personalized chopstick holders.
Frank Sinatra, Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Rudolph Valentino, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Elizabeth Taylor, Alfred Hitchcock and just about anyone else you can think of from Hollywood’s golden years also haunted the historic Musso & Frank Grill, or Musso’s as it’s more commonly known. The oldest restaurant in town, it began life in 1919 one door over from where it is now, which means it more or less predates Hollywood.
The owners have done their best to preserve everything in the historic spot, every piece of decor that may still hold “smoke from Bogart’s cigars.” The red-jacketed, white-shirted wait staff, meanwhile, are happy to point out the historic details to visiting journalists: That’s where Hitchcock used to sit and sip Aviation Gin; that’s the table the Rolling Stones reserved whenever they were in town; that’s the phone booth a pre-fame Johnny Depp used to keep in contact with his agent because he and then roommate Nicolas Cage couldn’t afford their own phone.
Musso’s was also a gathering place for writers. And not just any writers. For visiting journalists being plied with tales of Hollywood, steak tartare and Musso’s famous martinis, there is a certain novelty to sitting at the same bar where F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Chandler, Tennessee Williams, Aldous Huxley and William Faulkner wrote, proofread, and grumbled about Hollywood studios changing their work for the screen.
“The Writer’s Guild was right across the street,” says Mark Eccheverria, Musso’s fourth-generation family owner.
Are their ghosts still there? It depends on who you ask.