Old West’s Stars Live Again at New Mexico Watering Hole

It’s a roster of the stars of yesteryear, with names like Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne, Maria Montez, Tom Mix, Virginia Mayo, Ronald Reagan and Lucille Ball.

The names adorn the doors of guest rooms throughout El Rancho Hotel, which owes its birth to Hollywood.

The hotel was built in 1937 by the brother of movie magnate D. W. Griffith to house the actors and actresses who were then flocking to the wide-open spaces and red bluffs of northwestern New Mexico to make movies, mostly Westerns.

Hotel Faded With Westerns

On famous Route 66, the hotel played host to the famous, the near-famous and the once-famous for decades. But as Westerns faded, so did El Rancho.

It went through a series of owners, finally ending up on the auction block in a bankruptcy foreclosure 50 years after its grand opening.

Gallup businessman Armand Ortega bought the one-time showplace for $500,000 and spent about another $500,000 restoring it, said his daughter, Amelia Ortega Crowther, manager-bookkeeper for El Rancho.

‘Charm of Yesterday’

The hotel--which looks a bit like an oversize ranch house--reopened in May, 1988, its original motto of “Charm of Yesterday, Convenience of Tomorrow” intact in neon above the entrance.

The hotel’s huge, brick-floored, two-story lobby was restored to its Western flavor, a lariat surrounding the mirror behind the check-in counter, silver dollars embedded in the counter itself.

The lobby’s centerpiece is a huge arched rock and brick fireplace into which the original mason cut a card player’s diamond, club, spade and heart--appropriate since there once was open gambling at the big hotel.

Near the lobby, on a wooden bench and a chair made of steer horns, sit wooden Indians. The lobby walls and railings are festooned with big game trophies, Navajo rugs and Indian and Western art.

A rustic, curving double staircase, the carpeted steps made of logs sawed in half, flows gracefully up either side of the fireplace to a wide balcony that encircles the main room.

Photographs From Movies

The walls of the balcony are lined with black-and-white photographs. There are scenes from movies filmed in the area, such as “Texas Ranger,” starring Fred MacMurray, Jean Parker and Lloyd Nolan; “Ambush,” with Robert Taylor; “The Streets of Laredo,” starring William Holden and William Bendix; “Rocky Mountain,” with Errol Flynn; “Colorado Territory,” with Joel McCrea; “Pursued,” starring Robert Mitchum.

There are photographs--dozens of them--of such stars as the Marx Brothers, Alan Ladd, Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, Kirk Douglas, Lew Ayres, John Russell of the television show “The Lawman,” Robert Taylor and the Fondas, Henry and Jane, across the balcony from each other.

Some photographs are autographed, often to Martin Hanks, the hotel’s first manager.

At one end of the balcony is a picture of Clair Gurley. A salesman, he was the first person to stay at El Rancho when it opened in 1937. Crowther said that when Ortega reopened the hotel in 1988, he invited Gurley back--and charged him the original $5-a-night price.

Today’s rates range from $32 to $49.

Rooms Bear Names of Stars

The three-story hotel, still serviced by its original hand-cranked elevator, has 70 rooms. Each room is labeled with the name of a star who, research shows, probably stayed in that very room, Crowther said.

However, there’s at least one exception.

Ronald Reagan stayed at El Rancho a couple of times while making a movie and filming “Death Valley Days” for television, but Crowther said today’s Ronald Reagan Room is one that probably isn’t labeled accurately.

El Rancho originally had a hierarchy of rooms, the best ones in an area by themselves. One of the best is now the Reagan Room, but that probably has more to do with his being President than being a star.

“I’d guess Ronald Reagan never stayed in the Ronald Reagan Room because he wasn’t an ‘A’ star,” Crowther said. “He was a B-movie star.”

Jelly Beans in Reagan Room

The hotel keeps jelly beans, Reagan’s favorite snack, in the room. And if someone orders the Ronald Reagan sandwich from the dining room, that, too, comes with jelly beans.

There are rooms with the names of Jimmy Stewart, Robert Taylor, Groucho Marx, W. C. Fields, Doris Day, Jack Benny.

Ortega, Crowther said, once joked about ordering a pay phone for the Jack Benny Room, in keeping with the running gag about the star’s stinginess.

Crowther said guests often ask for a room named for a particular star.

The choices also include the names of Lee Marvin, Lee Remick, Claude Akins, Betty Grable, Rosalind Russell, Burt Lancaster, Elizabeth Scott, William Holden and Irene Manning.

Crowther acknowledges she doesn’t know who all the stars are or were--Manning, for instance.

(Manning’s film career ran from 1937 to 1948. She made several low-budget Westerns with Gene Autry.)

Close-to-Original State

The rooms have been refurbished to close-to-original state, Crowther said. One of El Rancho’s previous owners had paneled them, but Ortega had the paneling ripped out and the walls replastered white.

He also had the rooms furnished with rustic-looking furniture, such as beds with wagon-wheel headboards.

Several rooms have the original furniture, the light oak oiled after being rescued from under a thick coating of chocolate brown paint.

All the rooms have ceiling fans, since air-conditioning was not installed when the hotel was originally built half a century ago.

It does have air-conditioning now, so guests no longer must go out onto the roof to get a breath of cool air as they did in the old days.

Among the photographs displayed on the second-floor balcony is one showing Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, stars of “The Sea of Grass,” sitting on El Rancho’s roof with the movie’s director, who is not identified.

Bathrooms Added

The guest rooms now have tiny bathrooms, added in an early renovation. Except for rooms for big stars, the original hotel did not have bathrooms in each room, but rather had “baths down the hall,” Crowther said.

Since its reopening, El Rancho mostly has played host to ordinary folk. But there have been a couple of stars.

Michael Gross of television’s “Family Ties” ate at the hotel’s dining room one day. And Goldie Hawn stayed at El Rancho last summer on her way from Santa Fe to California.

“She was very nice,” Crowther said. “She stood in front of the fireplace, signed autographs and let people take pictures.”