Yes, I remember the Ambassador Hotel, the noble L.A. edifice
that dominated 24 acres just off Wilshire Boulevard from 1921 to 1989. I was there
at least twice. When I graduated from junior high school, some of the more
adventurous fourteen-year-olds took their dates to watch Louie Prima and Keely
Smith sing and swing at the world-famous Cocoanut Grove supper-club. Then, in
June of 1968, my parents and I thought it would be fun to drop in on Robert F.
Kennedy’s campaign headquarters, just after he’d won big in the California
presidential primary. The world knows what happened that night. RFK’s
assassination has tainted our memories of the Ambassador ever since. It
doubtless contributed to the hotel’s demise, and its ultimate replacement by a
large public community school dedicated to Kennedy’s memory.
A young girl named Carlyn Frank was hardly a casual visitor
to the hotel. During perhaps its most glorious era, from 1921 to 1938, she
lived on the premises while first her grandfather and then her father served as
general manager. Her home from babyhood to age 17 was an idyllic bungalow,
dubbed Rincon, that stood on the hotel grounds. (Doting hotel staff constructed
a child-sized playhouse, so she and her sister could make cocoa in a tiny kitchen.)
For 17 years young Carlyn explored every nook and cranny of the glamorous
hotel, much as the legendary Eloise roved New York’s Plaza Hotel in the picture
books of Kay Thompson.
Carlyn’s Ambassador years marked the era when Los Angeles
came into its own as the home of the American film industry. The Ambassador was adjacent, after all, to
the original Brown Derby restaurant, and located not far from major studios
like Paramount. And so the hotel cultivated a glamorous image, one that
attracted both Hollywood legends and wannabes. Carlyn’s father, Ben Frank,
brought to the Ambassador such innovations as a zoo, a pitch-and-putt golf
course, and an actual sand beach next to the swimming pool. Both he and her
grandfather, Abe Frank, also loved staging special events that attracted the
starstruck. One of Abe’s innovation at the Cocoanut Grove was the weekly Star
Night, for which an onsite artisan crafted wax dolls closely modeled on the
features of the female celebrity being honored. The beautifully dressed and
coiffed dolls adorned every table, and each went home at evening’s end with a
lucky guest.
I know all this because, as an adult, Carlyn Frank Benjamin
began writing a memoir, Life Without Reservations, that covered (along
with her own growing-up years) the Ambassador and its legendary guests. These
included in the early days Marion Davies, who rode a horse through the lobby,
and Zelda Fitzgerald, who set her wardrobe on fire after a jealous row with
Scott. Carlyn was too young to remember such antics, but did meet Charles
Lindbergh, watched Olympic champions train in the hotel pool, and frequently
(while eating her own lunch) glimpsed a hungover Bing Crosby munching a turkey
sandwich in the hotel coffee shop. The memoir was left behind when Benjamin
passed away in 2017; she considered it incomplete, but it also chronicled her
adult life as the wife of a famous Hollywood talent agent who brought
celebrities like Laurence Olivier into their Brentwood home for casual fun and
games. Daughter Lisa Benjamin Gilmour has fulfilled a promise to finish the
book, adding scores of vintage photos and her own memories of her vibrant and
civic-minded mom. Life Without Reservations: Growing Up at the Famed
Ambassador Hotel 1921-1938 is a fascinating record of a time and place that
now seem far, far away.
The book’s photo-rich website is www.lifewithoutreservations.net,
and of course it’s available through Amazon.
No comments:
Post a Comment