Memories and Milestones

Returning a monogrammed hotel napkin, one letter writer explained that years earlier she must have “accidentally left the restaurant with this caught in my coat.”

Returning a hotel shoehorn, a West L.A. dentist was upfront: “I admit it. I purloined the enclosed.”

The Regal Biltmore Hotel issued a call in January for memorabilia--no questions asked--for its yearlong 75th anniversary celebration, which kicked off Friday night.

It has received more than 100 responses. Bottles and openers, sewing kits, room keys, even a wood hanger from the ‘50s are among treasures collected for an in-house museum to open early next year.

“A lot of people have found items at flea markets, garage sales,” says Sheena Stephens, the hotel’s public relations manager. Others are returning items “they sort of walked away with when they were younger.”

Not surprisingly, Stephens adds, “a lot of items have come in from people with last names beginning with ‘B.’ ”

A Pasadena woman sent a bar of hotel soap she’d kept since her 1928 wedding night. A Sun City woman returned a silver spoon, explaining that her father worked for the company that serviced the elevators in the ‘30s. She speculated that he took home silverware that slipped through elevator cracks after being dropped by waiters.

Others have unearthed yellowed postcards (one of which was addressed to J. Paul Getty) and menus from elegant events in days gone by, such as a 1930 dinner honoring William Randolph Hearst with Louis B. Mayer as featured speaker.

There is a program, too, from the gala opening of the hotel on Oct. 2, 1923, an occasion on which 3,000 of the creme de la creme dined on seven courses and danced to the music of seven orchestras--plus singing canaries. Among guests were Cecil B. DeMille, Jack Warner, Theda Bara, Ramon Navarro, Myrna Loy and Jack Dempsey.

The menu, featuring delicacies such as crab meat epicurienne, noisette of lamb and assorted patisserie, was updated for ‘90s palates and re-created for the 500 guests at Friday night’s black-tie event at the Biltmore, which, appropriately enough, benefited the Los Angeles Conservancy, a group dedicated to preserving architectural and cultural treasures.

Such as the Regal Biltmore Hotel.

The hotel, a landmark at 5th Street and Grand in downtown Los Angeles, cost $10 million to build and, with 1,000 rooms, was the largest and grandest hostelry west of Chicago. It was a magnet for L.A. society and film stars and czars.

A commemorative coffee table book published for the 75th anniversary--”The Los Angeles Biltmore: The Host of the Coast”--defines its arrival as “a statement to the rest of the world that Los Angeles had arrived as an American metropolis.” With its Italian and Spanish Renaissance design, cathedral-like painted ceilings, stunning 350-foot galleria and gilded and glittering Crystal Ballroom, it was quite a statement.

“Luxury heaped upon luxury,” said The Times at the time.

Regal in Recent Times, Illustrious in the Past

It was known simply as the Biltmore until being bought in 1996 by Hong Kong-based Regal Hotels International, which recently put it up for sale.

But to many, it’s still just The Biltmore.

It’s lore is as rich as its tapestries, gilded cupids and carved marble. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was born at a gathering of film luminaries in the Crystal Ballroom in 1927; Cedric Gibbons sketched the Oscar on a hotel napkin. In 1931, the Oscar ceremony was, for the first time, held at the Biltmore.

Among those who’ve slept under its roof are assorted royalty and former presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson (both had headquarters there during the 1960 Democratic national convention). The pillows in the presidential suite, with its private elevator and secret liquor cabinet, have been plumped for six presidents. The Beatles were dropped by helicopter on the roof of the Biltmore, where they were secreted for a few days.

In its hallowed halls have been set numerous TV shows and feature films, including “Bugsy,” wherein Warren Beatty relaxed in the health club, and “Rocky III,” for which the Crystal Ballroom was converted to a fight arena. Commercials filmed at the hotel have pushed products from Burger King to Rolls-Royce.

A vintage Rolls was rolled out for Friday’s anniversary party, where guests included some with special ties to the hotel. Among them was Evelyn Barnard of Scottsdale, whose father-in-law, Charles Baad, was an original hotel partner and its first general manager. She and Baad’s adopted son, Robert Foehl, were wed in a large 11th floor suite in 1951.

In a recent interview, she recalled, “I thought I was marrying into heaven when I moved there. We had a private elevator to the 11th floor, where all the family lived.” It would be home for 15 years.

“In the early years,” Barnard says, “many important families had residences at the Biltmore before they located to Fremont Place” or other fashionable addresses. “Mr. Baad moved into his apartment and never left until he passed on in 1956.”

Barnard says it was repeal of Prohibition in 1933 after 16 dry years that saved the Biltmore during the Depression.

“When there was no liquor sold, all the hotels were in distress,” she says.

The hotel Barnard knew was one where men in cutaways and striped trousers showed guests to their rooms and a uniformed footman stood at the entrance. The staff was schooled by professionals sent from the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo and the Villa D’Este at Lake Como.

In the ‘30s and ‘40s, Barnard adds, the hotel’s Biltmore Bowl (which no longer exists) “had two shows nightly, international vaudeville like at the Palladium in London, and in between they had dancing to big bands. Everybody went.”

Sitting in the high-backed chairs in the galleria was in itself an adventure.

“Everybody came and sat in those chairs,” Barnard says.

“You might sit next to Mary Pickford or Douglas Fairbanks.” The Biltmore Theater, since razed, attracted New York actors, and they too stayed at the hotel.

Barnard remembers, “We had a linen company that did our linen in Ireland,” embellishing it with the Biltmore “B”. “It was woven in a small town where everyone worked in the mill” and each year the mill owner’s son came to the Biltmore to take the order.

But in time cost-cutting and the advent of man-made fabrics changed all that. Barnard says, “One fine year he came and there was no order.” Back home, she says, the poor man “couldn’t face his father and the whole town because the business was gone” and drowned himself.

Grandiose Memories of a Child Star

Once, Lassie Lou Ahern, 78, of West Hills was the Biltmore’s Eloise at the Plaza.

“I was in the first fashion show at the Biltmore when I was 3,” Ahern recalls. “The Ambassador wasn’t built then. The Biltmore was the hotel for most everything, the No. 1 spot.”

As a child film star, Ahern was in the original “Our Gang” comedies and made movies with Will Rogers. Lassie Lou modeled regularly in Biltmore fashion shows--”It was just before Shirley Temple”--and the outgoing child with the dark bob was big stuff, with her own line of Lassie Lou dresses and coats. After modeling the line for buyers upstairs, she’d walk up and down the elegant double staircase in the lobby. “I felt like a queen.”

When Carl Laemmle--”Uncle Carl” to Lassie Lou and then owner of Universal Studios--celebrated his 60th birthday at the Biltmore, 6-year-old Lassie Lou had a night to remember.

“The entire industry, all the big stars, came out,” she says.

She was to ascend and then descend a double staircase--60 steps up, 60 down--erected onstage, while holding a plaque to present to Laemmle. She’d rehearsed that afternoon but that night was horrified to find the steps covered in gold lame. “Did you ever walk on gold lame?”

But, trouper that she was, she did it without a misstep and then “had to walk the length of the head table with all the people sitting there, with all the fine stemmed glassware and flowers” to hand Laemmle the plaque. She did it “without spilling a drop of water or crushing a single rose.”

Now, 72 years later, Ahern remembers that “night of nights,” even her ruffled peach taffeta dress. One of the items donated for the hotel museum is a chipped 78 rpm recording of “Coquette” by the Biltmore Trio, “Filmland’s Favorite Sons of Syncopation.” Its donor: Joanne Drost of Burbank, whose father, Bill Seckler, headed the trio that played nightly in the late ‘20s.

“From what I understand,” said Drost, “people were just standing in line to hear them. It was almost as it is today with the rock groups.”

It was at the Biltmore where Drost’s parents met. Her mother, who’d just moved to Los Angeles from Houston with her family, went with a friend to the Biltmore one night to hear the trio and, says Drost, “was just enthralled.” When the trio asked for requests, she sent up a note asking for “Million Dollar Baby.”

Seckler sent champagne to her table and, as he would tell Drost years later, decided right then that “if that beautiful lady has good-looking legs, I’m going to marry her.” So, he asked for a dance. A year later they were married.

“Coquette” is the only Biltmore Trio recording Drost found among her late father’s things. He went on to have a big career, working with major stars in MGM musicals, writing monologues for Bob Hope and, for 20 years, performing with Four Hits and a Miss, a vocal group.

Her Temporary Stay Lasted for 57 Years

Today, there are no permanent residents at the Regal Biltmore. But once there was Thelma Becker, who for 57 years called the hotel home, until a broken hip forced her to move to a Los Angeles convalescent home last year.

Becker, now 86, recalls, “I came out in 1940 from Manhattan as assistant sales manager for Barbizon lingerie. They planted me out here, and my boss said, ‘Stay at the Biltmore.’ ” Well, she did.

Never once, she says, did she seriously consider moving. For one thing, she traveled a great deal for the company; for another, she was content there--”It was like a palace.” And she never married--”I never had time.” She didn’t just unpack and settle into one room for the duration. “I was always moving around. When they were having construction done, I had to move. Whenever there was a change of management, they started pounding.”

As the doyenne of the Biltmore, she was something of an in-house celebrity. A jazz aficionado, she frequented the Grand Avenue Bar. She also took her meals at the hotel--”The chef knew what I liked”--and the hotel staff members, among whom were second- and third-generation employees, were like family. Becker herself was an ex officio staff member, conducting VIP tours of the hotel “if I was in the mood and had the time.”

In 1975, when Becker retired, management reduced her room rate to $33 a night to enable her to stay on a retirement budget. In 1980, a suite, 308, was duly dedicated in her honor as the Becker Suite. Today, rooms start at $195 and suites can cost as much as $2,000 a night.

Other former guests have more fleeting, but equally precious, memories to share. Among those for whom the anniversary has ignited memories is a Utah man whose letter told of having his “last meal” at the Biltmore years ago. He’d been planning suicide but, sitting in the hotel, had changed his mind.

In have come bath towels and mats, a swizzle stick, a brass ticket from the Will Rogers-emceed opening night of the Biltmore Theater in 1924, martini glasses, a cuspidor, a menu from a Huntington Beach man who’d had a “last fling” meal at the hotel after enlisting in the Navy as a 17-year-old in 1943. Another man sent a souvenir photo of his parents in the ‘50s at the Biltmore Bowl, where his father had proposed.

And a 75-year-old woman who met her father for the first time at the Biltmore when she was 21 wrote to say, “Take care of the grand lady. . . . “