Once-Elegant Ambassador in Its Final Days : Symbol of L.A. Glamour in ‘20s, ‘30s to Close Jan. 3

As elegantly dressed women filed by his clothing shop in the Ambassador Hotel on Thursday, Richard Roberts rushed to open, even though several of his display racks and shelves were bare.

The last public event at the Ambassador was about to start, and Roberts hoped to attract the more than 600 people attending the Round Table West book and author luncheon to his half-price sale.

The 68-year-old Ambassador, symbol of the glamour of Los Angeles in the 1920s and 1930s, is closing Jan. 3.

The signs of its demise are already clear. Along red-carpeted halls on the ground floor, one shop has already closed, leaving only a few champagne bottles on display in the windows. Another shop that specialized in high-priced clothing ensembles has only eight sweaters and six dresses left.

The book club met in the Cocoanut Grove, the once-famed nightclub where John Barrymore drank with W. C. Fields while Barrymore’s pet monkey climbed the papier-mache palm trees and where Joan Crawford competed in dance contests.

A Shadow of Itself

Like everything else about the hotel, which was built when Wilshire Boulevard was still an unpaved street, the Grove looked like a shadow of itself. The palm trees are long gone, and the room, with dark, blank walls, has lost all traces of fantasy.

But many who attended the luncheon were full of memories.

“I used to go to afternoon tea dances here before I was married,” former Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty recalled. Beverly Hills resident Adele Gould, in a white mink coat and hat, reminisced that she and her late husband danced there every weekend.

“We announced our engagement here,” she said. “This hotel stands for something, like an old diamond.”

The lobby was empty, except for prop men from River City Productions. They hung bunting off gold-painted wall moldings, preparing a scene for “Capone in Jail,” a movie being filmed on the 23.5-acre property at Wilshire and Alexandria Avenue.

Behind the wooden front desk, Assistant Manager Red David, an employee for 11 years, said half the staff had been laid off a year ago when all but 150 of the 500 bedrooms and suites were shut down. Only the most senior employees stayed.

“How do you feel when you lose something you’ve had for a while?” he asked. “You feel sad.”

Nearby, Santiago Mier presided over the Palm Bar where Walter Winchell used to collect items for his column. It was also empty. Windows looked out at a gray, rainy day and a bright green lawn and flower beds leading down to the pool.

“Ever since I came to work here seven years ago I’ve been hearing: ‘It’s going to close. It’s going to close,’ ” the 28-year-old bartender said. “And now it’s happened.” He plans, he said, to go to school and get into the computer business.

Roberts said he will relocate his Taffy’s shop in Century City. His mother opened the store at the hotel 28 years ago.

That seemed somehow fitting, since many say the Ambassador is a victim of new developments in West Los Angeles and downtown, a trend that has left the hotel and the rest of the Mid-Wilshire District behind. “Los Angeles moved beyond this area,” Yorty said.

The Ambassador has been losing “substantial amounts of money year after year,” said Richard S. Volpert, an attorney who represents the J. Myer Schine family trusts that own the hotel.

“The owners poured money in hoping it would turn around, but it never did,” he added. The hotel has been for sale since 1985.

Rumored buyers have included New York mogul Donald Trump, a San Francisco investors group, Korean investors and even the Los Angeles Unified School District. Volpert said negotiations are under way with a potential buyer he would not name, only saying, “I’m cautiously bullish.”

The fate of the quasi-Spanish style structure, sold or not, is unknown. The City Council last year voted not to give the building local landmark status. However, the owners did sign an agreement with the Los Angeles Conservancy not to demolish the hotel for a year while a buyer who would be willing to refurbish and save it was sought. But the agreement expired in August.

Margaret Burk, who with partner Marylin Hudson has held 139 meetings of the book club at the hotel, said she is “devastated” at the closing. She has also been the hotel’s spokeswoman for 20 years, she said, hired to help shore up the hotel’s image after Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated there on June 5, 1968.

The book club, the largest of its kind in the country, will go to the Midtown Hilton on North Vermont Avenue, she noted, but she was not sure where she and Hudson will relocate their offices. She will miss the hotel, she said. “It’s like a friend.”