THE GOLDEN ERA

Actress Jean Harlow is said to have sneaked a succession of toyboy lovers through a separate door to her room while her husband slept on a bed in the living room.

She spent the last of her three honeymoons in Suite 32-33 but it is not clear if the same arrangements applied.

In 1935 before he became a bigshot filmmaker, Billy Wilder said he would “rather sleep in a bathroom than in another hotel”. When the Chateau was full he persuaded staff to put him up in the lobby of a ladies’ cloakroom. “It was a small room,” Wilder noted. “But it had six toilets.”

Reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes lived like a hermit in Penthouse 64 in the 50s. He’d use binoculars to spy on girls by the pool and then ring the concierge to go and proposition them on his behalf.

In 1956 heartthrob actor Montgomery Clift hid out there after falling asleep at the wheel of his car and crashing as he left a party at Elizabeth Taylor’s home. He would occasionally be seen on the terrace screaming obscenities in the nude. Three years later Errol Flynn went into a drunken rampage in Bungalow Three a week before he died of a heart attack and cirrhosis.

In 1958 Bette Davis fell asleep with a lit cigarette while watching one of her own movies on TV and almost burned the place down. An actor staying next door saw smoke coming out of the window and probably saved her life. She never went back.

Errol Flynn, Montgomery Clift & Bette Davis group Led Zeppelin roared along the corridors on motorbikes.

It was actually just their drummer John Bonham who rode his Harley Davidson into the lobby, ruining the carpet. Alice Cooper, left, and his roadies played naked footie in the lobby and the cast of Hair rehearsed starkers in the drawing room.

And Pink Floyd’s all-night skinny-dipping parties were so loud that the neighbours complained.