Sally Cobb; Co-Wrote Book on Brown Derby

Sally Cobb, former doyenne of the Brown Derby restaurants who co-wrote a book about their lore, recipes and celebrity diners, has died. She was 83.

Cobb, the widow of Brown Derby owner Robert H. Cobb, died Tuesday in Los Angeles, according to her friend and publicist Bee Canterbury Lavery.

A prominent John Robert Powers model in the 1930s, the former Sally Fletcher was known as “the Figure.” She also won a national contest to become “Miss Chesterfield” in the tobacco company’s billboard and newspaper advertising campaign.

The Kansas-born New Yorker moved to Los Angeles and married Cobb in 1945, working with him at his four restaurants and organizing fund-raising theater and fashion events. When her husband owned the Hollywood Stars baseball team, Cobb staged what was believed to be the first fashion show presented on a baseball diamond--a benefit for the Assistance League of Southern California.

Last year, Cobb and Mark Willems co-wrote the best-selling book “The Brown Derby Restaurant: A Hollywood Legend.”

The name of the by-then-defunct eatery originated, she explained, in a 1925 comment by raconteur Wilson Mizner that, if a restaurant’s food and service were good enough, “people would probably come and eat it out of a hat.” Only one of the restaurants (remaining Derbys exist at Disney World and the MGM Grand in Las Vegas) was actually shaped like a hat and painted brown--the one on Wilshire Boulevard across from the now-closed Ambassador Hotel. It has been partially preserved as historic architecture within a shopping center.

The greater magnet for movie stars was the Hollywood Brown Derby, famous for its wall-mounted caricatures as well as its food.

Cobb’s husband originated such internationally popular staples as the chopped Cobb salad there. He also invented a grapefruit cake when gossip columnist Louella Parsons went on a grapefruit diet.

After her husband’s death in 1970, Cobb moved into the president’s office for the restaurants.

As a philanthropist, she was a founding member of the Exceptional Children’s Foundation and chaired the Marine Corps “Toys for Tots” drive.

Cobb is survived by her daughter, Peggy Cobb Walsh, two grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Services are scheduled for 9:30 a.m. Saturday at the Church of the Recessional, Forest Lawn, Glendale. The family has requested that any memorial donations be sent to St. Anne’s Maternity Home, 155 N. Occidental St., Los Angeles 90026.