War and Peace Revisited : A Painting--and a Hotel--Are Restored on Hollywood Boulevard

I have not yet found the 1929 statue of oilman-philanthropist Mericos (Max) Whittier, which long ago mysteriously disappeared from Exposition Park.

But another long-missing work of art of the same vintage has turned up back where it started from--in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

It is a 4x8-foot oil painting of Napoleon and his officers on a battlefield. It was painted by an unschooled artist, Charles de Ravenne, who started it at the age of 13 and finished it at 16.

It was titled “Hollywood Comes to Napoleon’s Aid,” and its boy artist was hailed in the Hollywood press as nothing less than the reincarnation of Raphael.

What made the work such a sensation in the film colony was that its painter cleverly gave Napoleon and all his officers the faces of Hollywood stars and moguls.

He outdid himself in cleverness by adding to the scene a soubrette-nurse with the face of actress- comedienne Marion Davies, notoriously the protegee and mistress of William Randolph Hearst. Thus, it was Hearst himself who in 1929 unveiled the painting in the Blossom Room of the Roosevelt, where the first Academy Awards were held.

I received a note the other day from Jan Walner, of the hotel’s public relations staff, telling me about this forgotten masterpiece.

“It is our hope that you will come by to see the painting,” she said, “and perhaps alert your readers that it is here.”

I was happy to have another excuse to visit the Roosevelt, which has been restored to its Spanish Colonial Revival splendor.

I saw the painting hanging at the front of the lobby over the concierge’s desk. She was busy on the telephone, speaking in French. I called Ms. Walner on a house phone, and she came down to see me, together with Nadia Ghaleb, the hotel’s director of public relations. We studied the painting.

Napoleon is at the forefront, astride a white horse, followed by his officers. Napoleon’s face was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. From her research, Ms. Walner disclosed that it was the face of Joseph M. Schenck, head of United Artists and later of 20th Century Fox; his horse was the cowboy actor Fred Thompson’s trick mount, Silver King.

Grouped around the great general are his mounted chieftains, with the faces of Erich Von Stroheim, Ronald Colman, Douglas Fairbanks, Clive Brook, Sid Grauman, Adolphe Menjou (on Rex, the “king of the wild horses”), William Powell and John Gilbert.

On the left, Ben Turpin, in a shako, rides past the drum corps with an upraised pennant. In the foreground, right, a stupefied Charlie Chaplin lies on the field. He is succored by Miss Davies in a military blouse and bonnet. In his right hand he holds the cause of his stupor: a bottle of champagne.

In the right rear, Napoleon’s cavalry is riding up, arms waving.

Ms. Walner had collected several contemporary articles about the painting. One said it was Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow; but the air of exultation suggests a regrouping of Napoleon’s staff after Austerlitz, his greatest victory.

It was Mrs. Sid Grauman who evidently prevailed upon her husband, the celebrated entrepreneur, to install the painting across the boulevard in his Chinese Theater. Mrs. Grauman may also have been responsible for two bare-looking patches in the foreground. A photograph of the original shows two dead bodies. They have been removed. All that remains of them is the shoe of one dead soldier.

I hardly think young Ravenne was the reincarnation of Raphael; his painting lacked the bursting light and voluptuous form of the master; but he was pretty good with horses.

The painting was recovered by coincidence. The artist had leased it to Billy Rose, who took it to New York. On Rose’s death, it came back to Ravenne. When he died, his sister, Nina, sold it to a young man who happened to be a neighbor of Ms. Ghaleb. One day recently he said to her, “I think I have something you might be interested in. . . .”

The concierge, Hoda Mina--an Egyptian who speaks English, French, Greek and Arabic--said that Ravenne’s sister came in one day to see the painting, and wept.

Ms. Walner and Ms. Ghaleb took me to the top floor to see the two-story Celebrity Suite. The living room, dining room and four-stool bar were luxurious. Windows looked north toward the Yamashiro restaurant and the Magic Castle and down on Grauman’s (Mann’s) Chinese; Hollywood Boulevard stretched out to the east.

We climbed a stairway to the bedroom. It was a triumph of seclusion. The raftered ceiling was pyramidal. The bed was enormous. Tiny windows, like peepholes in a castle, looked out on Hollywood.

“Clark Gable and Carole Lombard used to come here to be together,” Ms. Walner confided. “That was before they were married.”

I felt as if I were intruding on that glorious assignation.

Believe me--Hollywood lives.