The Scene : Eat, Drink and Dress
It’s the kind of place everyone seems to have heard of, or noticed, or been meaning to check out. Tucked into a crook of the Knickerbocker Hotel, a Hollywood landmark on Ivar with that telltale Norma Desmond tragi-glam air and requisite checkered history, it looks from the outside like it might be a vintage clothing shop. Or an antique store. Or a pool hall. But it says right on the door that it’s a cafe. But if you happen to pass it in the daytime, all you can do is look in the windows, because it doesn’t open until 7 p.m. Ever.
“Oh, you have to go,” says my friend Deborah. We are at a party, and she is looking exquisite in a peach ensemble--gored skirt, three-quarter-sleeved jacket--which she purchased at the above-mentioned cafe. Vintage 1940s peau de souie with beaded peplum from a cafe? “Oh yeah, and did you see my gloves? You gotta see the gloves. Bracelet length. I got them there too. You really have to go.”
Clearly. So it’s Saturday night, and I’m having one of those evenings when I don’t know whether to kill myself or buy a hat. Instead I gather my friend Emily, and we hie ourselves to the 2 1/2-year-old All Star Theatre Cafe, where I discover that if millinery is my only alternative to suicide--that and an iced cappuccino and a quick game of backgammon--I have come to the right place. I have been in coffeehouses where you can play cards; I have been in vintage jewelry stores that sold paintings; I have even been in clothing stores where you can eat dinner while you try on that perfect Size 6 (OK, make it an 8 and extra dressing on that Reuben). But I have never been in a place where you can do all of these things. And did I mention the pool table? The chessboard, the backgammon board, the miniature roulette wheel?
Dark and cozy, the cafe is the ultimate rec room--enough sofas and wing chairs (in that grandparent green-and-gold damask) and games for a brood to rival the Kennedys, and a soda-fountain counter in the back where owner David (Max) Fisher will fix you an iced mocha and a croissant sandwich. Under two genuine Liberace chandeleirs, a disparate crowd smokes and sips and shuffles--knots of the inevitable black-clad, red-lipsticked set, middle-aged tourists in, yes, madras shorts and tennis shirts, and a few blue-jeaned screenwriter types possibly here because of a tragic, disillusioning experience at Starbuck’s.
But wait, there’s more. There’s merchandise. Absolutely fabulous merchandise. Yards of waist-high display cases chock full of baubles, bangles and beads; racks of evening gowns and beaded jackets, fur chubbies and crinoline flared skirts; hats and bags and wraps and gloves. It’s as if someone ransacked the closets of Audrey Hepburn, Lucille Ball, Jayne Mansfield and my mother.
“My sister is mainly into vintage jewelry,” Max explains. “She uses it as models for her own pieces. But when she’s out buying, sometimes she’ll pick up a gown or an interesting jacket. Only very nice things. We rent out a lot, and the ones you see are for sale.” He gestures toward the racks. “We do a lot of shoots in here. She just did one where she put the model in a suit Katharine Hepburn wore in ‘Bringing Up Baby.’ ” While may of the clothes you can rent come straight from the wardrobes of luminaries; most of what is for sale doesn’t. So much for my instant transformation into Nora Charles.
You could spend all night at the All-Star Theatre Cafe, and that’s a fact. Because it’s open until 3 a.m., which answers a question that has been nagging at me for years: Where can you go after a show at the Chinese or El Capitan if you’ve had it with Hamburger Hamlet? Well, there’s Musso’s, but no matter how many martinis you have, you can’t play pool there. Or checkers. Or dress up.
