Great Days for a Grande Dame Among Hotels

Before the Music Center rose on Bunker Hill, Los Angeles’ cultural heart belonged to Pershing Square.

In those days, the square’s nighttime habitues were not the homeless, but well-dressed couples out for a breath of flower-scented air during the intermission in that night’s play or concert.

West of the square stood the “host of the Coast,” the Biltmore Hotel, and, beside it for four decades, the Biltmore Theater. At its apex, the Biltmore Theater was the local venue for such stars as Ethel Barrymore, Katherine Cornell and Al Jolson. Across the street diagonally from the hotel was Philharmonic Auditorium.

When the “grande dame” of downtown hotels opened in October 1923, trainloads of 2,000 hotel entrepreneurs from across the nation arrived for the gala celebration. It was almost enough to make locals forget that the Biltmore’s massive Italianate facade had replaced St. Paul’s Cathedral, whose spire had been a local landmark.

It was billed as the “largest and grandest hotel west of Chicago” and named for the Eastern chain of hotels owned by John McEntee Bowman. A consortium of local businessmen built the structure in just 18 months for $10 million.

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During Prohibition, Los Angeles was grappling with phenomenal growth, and although the area around the Biltmore was relatively safe, Joe Dircks of the Police Department’s mounted patrol roamed the nearby streets on his chestnut quarter horse, Bob, looking for parking violators and drunks. Dircks and Bob became something of a celebrity twosome on the beat as they controlled the theater crowds. And while Dircks ate at the Biltmore, Bob begged for treats from passersby.

In fact, most of the inebriated folks Dircks apprehended were hotel guests, some of whom may have sampled too many of the intoxicating beverages in the luxurious Presidential suite. There, hidden buttons installed in the paneling of the room triggered the opening of a secret liquor compartment.

In 1927, the Oscar statuette was conceived from scribblings on a linen napkin and a few years later, Bette Davis and Jimmy Stewart received their Oscars in the hotel’s Biltmore Bowl, which also became a famous showcase for the big bands of the 1940s.

Germany’s Graf Zeppelin hovered over the Biltmore on a round-the-world jaunt in 1929 before landing at Mines Field (now Los Angeles International Airport). As the crew and passengers banqueted at the hotel, the dirigible’s commissary was replenished with complete supplies from the kitchen.

During World War II, the hotel experienced Army occupation when its second floor was set up with cots for military personnel.

In 1947, Elizabeth Short was left at the hotel by a traveling salesman who had given her a ride from San Diego, and she made several calls from the lobby before vanishing into crime history. Short, remembered today as the Black Dahlia, was found mutilated and cut in half in a vacant lot a week later.

The hotel was jammed with noisy supporters when Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts set up his headquarters in what is now the hotel’s lobby during the 1960 Democratic Convention. The Beatles landed in a helicopter atop the hotel and hid out in the building during their first U.S. tour (in the mid-1960s).

The hotel, now called the Regal Biltmore, has long been a favorite location for the filming of TV and motion pictures that included “The Poseidon Adventure,” “A Star Is Born,” “New York, New York,” “Roots,” “Beverly Hills Cop,” “The Sting” and “Vertigo,” which used the 11 flights of ornate wrought-iron back stairs to create its dizzying scenes.

Designed by the New York architectural firm of Schultze and Weaver in the Italian-Spanish Renaissance tradition, the Biltmore features cathedral-like ceilings hand-painted by Italian artist Giovanni Smeraldi, whose work also graces the White House and the Vatican.

Six months after the hotel’s debut, construction was completed on the Biltmore Theater, designed by the same architects, at 5th Street and Grand Avenue. The 1,700-seat playhouse was built by theater magnates Abe Erlanger and Joseph Toplitzky. Humorist Will Rogers emceed the debut of Florenz Ziegfeld’s musical comedy “Sally” starring Leon Errol.

Dance impresario James A. Doolittle, along with Louis Lurie, a multimillionaire property investor, later turned the theater into a thriving playhouse after it floundered under previous management. There they presented 40 plays, including “Gypsy” with Ethel Merman.

Doolittle created a system of ticket vouchers to attract a wider audience. With a voucher, one dollar would get you into any of several seats set aside for each performance. These passports to cultural discovery allowed a diverse audience to share in Greek tragedy or the Royal Danish Ballet.

Before the faded curtains dropped for the last time in 1964 and the theater became another parking lot, Yvonne De Carlo and Alan Arkin starred in “Enter Laughing.”

Scrawled in lipstick on De Carlo’s dressing room door were the words: “Knock. Do Not Bust In.”