Interpreting the History of the Garden of Allah Hotel at 8150 Sunset

Prepared by the Alla Nazimova Society for Townscape Partners

November 2013

For 32 years, the Garden of Allah was the favorite hotel of Hollywood’s bohemian elite. Its chief attraction was its aura of sophisticated hedonism, a vibe that was a legacy of its founder, Broadway phenom and silent film star, Alla Nazimova. Over the years, its guests included movie stars, world-renowned musicians and even a mobster or two. It was also closely associated with the Algonquin Round Table, the New York writers’ group from the 1920s, many of whose members made the Garden their base when they decamped to Hollywood in the 1930s.

The Garden was demolished over 50 years ago, and yet its legend lives on. Its name evokes the glamor and romance of Hollywood’s golden age and, even now, the southwest corner of Sunset and Crescent Heights boulevards is still remembered as the Garden of Allah site.

In 2013, Townscape Partners bought the former Garden property and announced plans to build a residential and retail complex on the site, which is called 8150 Sunset. Townscape has invited suggestions for ways to incorporate the Garden of Rendering of 8150 Sunset Allah’s history into the new project. In response to that invitation, this document, initiated by the Alla Nazimova Society, offers ideas for naming the property CONTENTS and identifies opportunities for integrating the hotel’s Opportunities for Interpretation Algonquin Square ...... 2 history into 8150 Sunset: Nazimova Fountain ...... 3 Benchley & Parker Plazas ...... 4 . Algonquin Square: A name that reflects the property’s historic 'Walk of Fame' ...... 5 association with the Algonquin Round Table Scale Model ...... 6 . The Nazimova Fountain: A water feature that recalls the About the Alla Nazimova Society ...... 6 Garden’s world famous swimming pool . . Benchley Plaza & Parker Park: Outdoor spaces named for History of the Garden of Allah Garden mainstays Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker Rancho La Brea ...... 7 . “Walk of fame”: Hollywood-style paver markers throughout the Hayvenhurst ...... 8 property honoring the hotel’s famous guests The Garden of Allah Hotel ...... 9 End of an Era ...... 9 . Scale model: A new model of the hotel created using the latest technology installed for permanent display Addendum: Site Map ...... 11 8150 SUNSET | ALLA NAZIMOVA SOCIETY 2

OPPORTUNITIES FOR INTERPRETATION

1. ALGONQUIN SQUARE

Integrate the property's historic association with the Algonquin Round Table by incorporating "Algonquin" in the name -- perhaps Algonquin West, the Hollywood Algonquin, Algonquin on Sunset or, with a nod to Round Table's famous word play, Algonquin Square.

The Algonquins were an exclusive group of about a dozen of the nation's best- known columnists, critics, editors and other media figures who dined together every day at a round table in Manhattan's Algonquin Hotel. The one- liners, puns and witticisms they traded over lunch would often appear in each other’s columns the next day. Outsiders Clockwise from left at table in foreground: Dorothy Parker, Robert called their group the Algonquin Round Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, Heywood Broun, Marc Connelly, Franklin P. Adams, Edna Ferber, George S. Kaufman and Robert Sherwood. In Table but they referred to themselves as back, left to right: Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt, Vanity Fair editor "the Vicious Circle." Frank Crowninshield, and Frank Case. (Drawing by Al Hirschfeld.)

Founded in 1919, the Round Table reached its peak of influence in 1925. Even so, within four years, the group had disbanded and over the next few years, about half its core members decamped to Hollywood and the Garden of Allah. Robert Benchley, one of the group’s founders, was the first to "go Hollywood,” when he was hired in 1925 by producer Jesse Lasky to write subtitles for silent films. Benchley moved into the Garden around 1933 and was soon joined by co-founder Dorothy Parker, as well as Marc Connelly (Pulitzer winner for drama), George S. Kaufman (Pulitzer winner and screenwriter for the Marx Brothers) and New Yorker columnist Alexander Woollcott. Founding Round Tabler Robert Sherwood socialized at the Garden after he moved to Hollywood. Associate Algonquinites Tallulah Bankhead, Harpo Marx and playwright David Ogden Stewart were also frequent guests at the hotel.

The Algonquin Round Table was never an official organization with by-laws, dues and the rest, and its new incarnation at the Garden of Allah was even more ad hoc. Other writers entered and left the orbit: S.J. Perelman, Louis Bromfield, John O'Hara, Lillian Hellman, Somerset Maugham and F. Scott Fitzgerald, among others. The group also attracted actors of an intellectual bent. In particular, Humphrey Bogart chose to live at the Garden when he moved to Hollywood in 1935 (to film “The Petrified Forest,” based on Robert Sherwood’s play), in part because his friends Benchley and Parker lived there.

Years later, another somewhat similar group of wealthy bohemians, the Rat Pack, morphed around former Garden residents Bogart, his wife Lauren Bacall and David Niven. After Bogart’s death the group coalesced around Frank Sinatra, who had also lived at the Garden, and moved with him in the 1960s from the Sunset Strip to the Las Vegas Strip, where the cycle finally ended. 8150 SUNSET | ALLA NAZIMOVA SOCIETY 3

2. NAZIMOVA FOUNTAIN

Memorialize the Garden of Allah’s famous swimming pool by designing a water feature on the property to iterate its shape. The original pool was commissioned by Alla Nazimova, so it would be fitting to name it in her honor: the Nazimova Fountain, perhaps including a statue of her in one of her dramatic poses.

Nazimova had the pool installed in 1918, within weeks after she acquired Hayvenhurst, the estate that would later become the Garden of Allah Hotel. The pool was large, 60 by 90 feet, and it was The debate about whether Nazimova designed the pool in the shape of the first in Hollywood equipped with the Black Sea went on for decades - implementing the same shape in underwater lights. Nazimova reportedly the Nazimova Fountain could extend the debate for generations to traced her initials, “AN,” into the cement come soon after it was poured.

During Nazimova’s residency, the pool became notorious for the private women-only swim parties she held there on Sundays. In the hotel era, the pool was the Garden of Allah’s centerpiece, gathering place and main attraction. It was also known for the regularity with which movie stars fell into it. Lucius Beebe, the columnist and frequent Garden guest, wrote, “It's conventional to fall into the pool. All the best people do it. It wakes one up.” According to legend, John Barrymore held the record for the most falls.

Guests might fall into the pool at night but as they sunned themselves beside it during languid gin- soaked afternoons, they debated whether Nazimova had designed it in the shape of the Black Sea, where she grew up. In surviving photographs, a map of the Black Sea is hard to discern. (The Crimean Peninsula is notably absent). If anything, it looks like a grand piano viewed from overhead.

Finally, it is possible that the pool is still there, entombed under the parking lot. According to Nazimova biographer Gavin Lambert, in August 1959, Plans for 8150 Sunset already show a water feature (1) at “Nazimova’s original home was bulldozed along with the corner of Sunset and Crescent Heights (for a full-size view, visit 8150sunset.com) the villas; the pool was drained and used as dump for the debris."

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3. BENCHLEY PLAZA AND PARKER PARK

Honor the memory of the two people who were most highly identified with the Garden of Allah hotel in its day, Robert Benchley, the humorist, critic and Oscar-winning filmmaker, and Dorothy Parker, the columnist, critic, poet, short- story writer and Oscar- nominated screenwriter, by naming outdoor spaces after them, perhaps Benchley Plaza Benchley and Parker and Parker Park.

Benchley and Parker met at “Vanity Fair” in 1919 and later shared an office that Parker described as “so tiny that an inch smaller and it would have been adultery.” That same year, they and others co-founded the Algonquin Round Table, a platform that put them in to the national spotlight in the 1920s and served as a stepping stone to Hollywood in the 1930s.

As noted, Benchley moved west in 1925 to work for Jesse Lasky and was living at the Garden of Allah when Parker arrived in the mid-1930s. During her time in Hollywood, Dorothy Parker would work on numerous screenplays, two of which -- "A Star Is Born" (1937) and "Smash Up: The Story of a Woman" (1947) -- received Oscar nominations. She also wrote the script for Alfred Hitchcock's "Saboteur."

Benchley became a popular comic actor, appearing in “Dancing Lady,” with Joan Crawford and Clark Gable, and Hitchcock’s “Foreign Correspondent.” He was perhaps best known for starring in 48 short films, starting with “The Treasurer’s Report,” released in 1927, one of the earliest “talkies.” His short “How to Sleep” won the Academy Award for Best Short Subject in 1935. (Many of Benchley’s shorts can be seen today on Turner Classic Movies.)

Benchley stayed at the Garden off and on until he died, in 1945. Dorothy Parker left the hotel soon afterwards and moved several times before eventually buying a house nearby at 8983 Norma Place. She later returned to New York, where she died in 1967. While Parker is better remembered today, Benchley was, according to the columnist Sheilah Graham, not only the hotel’s “the host of hosts,” he was “the reflection and the heart of the Garden of Allah.”

Finally, it is noteworthy that both of Robert Benchley’s sons became writers, as did his grandsons, one of whom, Peter Benchley, wrote the novel Jaws.

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4. WALK OF FAME

Garden residents, from left: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Lillian Hellman, Orson Welles, Ronald Reagan, Ava Gardner, Frank Sinatra, Mickey Cohen Immortalize the Garden of Allah’s famous guests with plaques embedded in pavers throughout the property, similar to Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, each honoring a famous actor, writer or musician or other popular figure associated with the Garden. This list is representative of the famous guests who might be honored with a marker:

Liz Allen Jed Harris Maureen O’Sullivan Lauren Bacall Lillian Hellman Laurence Olivier Tallulah Bankhead Madeline Hurlock George Oppenheimer John Barrymore Garson Kanin Dorothy Parker Lucius Beebe George S. Kaufman S.J. Perelman Robert Benchley Buster Keaton Roland Petit Humphrey Bogart Muriel King Tyrone Power Clara Bow Arthur Kober Sergei Rachmaninoff Louis Bromfield Alexander Korda Ronald Reagan Charles Butterworth Elsa Lanchester Flora Robson Louis Calhern Charles Laughton Ginger Rogers John Carradine Frank Lawton Harry Ruby Virginia Cherrill Lila Lee Natalie Schafer Mickey Cohen John Loder Leon Shamroy Buster Collier Anita Louise Artie Shaw Ronald Colman Bessie Love Arthur Sheekman Marc Connolly Ernst Lubitsch Frank Sinatra Jean Dalrymple Frances Marion Red Skelton Lili Damita Harpo Marx Everette Sloane Florence Desmond Zeppo Marx Donald Ogden Stewart Dorothy, Countess Di Frasso Groucho Marx Leopold Stokowski Marlene Dietrich Sam Marx Igor Stravinksy F. Scott Fitzgerald Glesca Marshall Gloria Stuart (Sheekman) Errol Flynn Somerset Maugham Margaret Sullavan Greta Garbo Eddie Mayer Kay Thompson Ava Gardner John McClain Sylvia Sheekman Thompson Dorothy Gish Pat Medina Whitney Tower Jackie Gleason Ward Morehouse Forrest Tucker Jimmy Gleason Nita Naldi H.B. Warner Elinor Glyn Ramon Navarro Orson Welles Frances Goodrich (Hackett) Alla Nazimova Dame May Whitty Ruth Gordon Mickey Neilan Herbert Wilcox Sheilah Graham David Niven Hugh Williams D.W. Griffith John O’Hara Hope Williams Albert Hackett Maureen O’Hara John Hay “Jock” Whitney Jon Hall Walter O’Keefe Alexander Woollcott

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5. SCALE MODEL

Create a scale model of the Garden of Allah for permanent display within the project, showing the hotel as it was in the 1930s, when it was at its peak. The model could serve as both a point of historical interest and a work of art. It could be displayed in a dedicated gallery space, a lobby or other prominent public area.

In 1959, Bart Lytton, whose Lytton Savings & Loan bought the Garden of Allah Hotel and razed it that same year, commissioned the creation of a scale model of the hotel. When Lytton Savings opened in June 1960, the model The 1959 model of the Garden of Allah Hotel as it appears now, was installed in its own gazebo-like structure photo by Martin Turnbull on the northeast corner of the property. It was later displayed in the bank lobby and, later still, moved into storage on site. As recent press reports have noted, that model was recently discovered in the living room of a local resident.

The 1959 model, which depicts the hotel as it looked in its final years, is an important historic artifact that should be preserved and put on display in a museum or library. However, its look and feel may be a bit dated for display in the 8150 Sunset project. Recent technological advances have revolutionized the technology of architectural model-making, and it would be more appropriate to commission the creation of a scale model designed to be a permanent fixture fitted to a particular space within the property.

ABOUT THE ALLA NAZIMOVA SOCIETY

The principal authors of this document are associated with the Alla Nazimova Society. Founded in 2013, the society’s mission is to focus attention on the remarkable career of Alla Nazimova, star of Broadway, vaudeville and film, and seek opportunities to preserve Nazimova’s legacy, which includes her films, theatrical performances and papers as well as the Garden of Allah Hotel.

In support of its mission, the society seeks to: . Identify Nazimova’s papers, extant movie prints and other artifacts and ensure they are archived and preserved . Promote exhibition of Nazimova’s films . In advance of the 2018 centennial of her arrival in Hollywood, facilitate exhibitions about her life and artistry at film-related museums and institutions.

Visit the Society online at allanazimova.com. 8150 SUNSET | ALLA NAZIMOVA SOCIETY 7

HISTORY OF THE GARDEN OF ALLAH PROPERTY By Jon Ponder & Martin Turnbull, Alla Nazimova Society

1. RANCHO LA BREA

Today's 8150 Sunset property was originally an undeveloped section along the northwest boundary of Rancho La Brea, a 4,439-acre spread in Mexico’s Alta California territory. The rancho’s primary Hayvenhurst, in a photo taken before Nazimova remodeled it in 1918 operation was mining asphaltum from the La Brea Tar Pits situated at its southern border. After Mexico ceded California to the United States, the rancho was acquired, in 1860, by Major Henry Hancock, a lawyer and land speculator. After Hancock died in 1883, his heirs sold a 160-acre parcel in northwest Rancho La Brea that included 8150 Sunset’s 2.5 acres to Andrew Hay, a wealthy émigré from Windsor, Canada.

The Sunset Blvd. trolley from Hollywood was extended westward to what is now Laurel Canyon Blvd. around this same time. The last stop on the trolley was roughly where the Metro bus stop is now at the northeast corner of 8150 Sunset. A post office may have occupied the lot as early as the 1880s. In 1903, William H. Hay, another Canadian from the Windsor area and likely Andrew Hay’s heir, acquired the land and, in 1905, developed it into a subdivision called Crescent Heights, the boundaries of which today are Sunset and Santa Monica boulevards to the north and south respectively, and Fairfax and Havenhurst avenues to the east and west.

In 1913 William Hay built an estate on the future 8150 Sunset lot that he called Hayvenhurst. (Hay would later develop Encino in the San Fernando Valley, and build another fine home for himself and his wife on yet another street he also named Hayvenhurst.) After just a few years, however, Hay and his wife vacated Hayvenhurst and moved to a Crews at work on Sunset Boulevard near the Crescent Heights much larger home down the street (where the development around 1905 Directors Guild building stands now), and Hayvenhurst sat empty until Nazimova acquired it in 1918.

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2. HAYVENHURST

"Yes, I've a wonderful home," [Nazimova] said, “out near Laurel Canyon, where there are a swimming pool and five fireplaces and even chickens in the back yard by day and mocking birds by night. And please say that I'm tremendously happy to be in California." - Los Angeles Times columnist Grace Kingsley in December 1918

Upon her arrival in Hollywood in 1918, Nazimova’s $13,000-per-week contract with Metro Pictures made her the Looking north across the pool at the back of Hayvenhurst after highest-paid female star in town. She was Nazimova’s remodel already famous for her groundbreaking interpretations of Ibsen and Chekov on Broadway, performances that had been so lucrative for the Shubert Organization that the producers had named their 39th Street theatre in her honor. Her first movie, "War Brides," filmed in New Jersey in 1916, was a runaway hit -- its antiwar theme resonated with American audiences who were leery of being lured into World War I.

Within weeks of moving to Hollywood, Nazimova leased Hayvenhurst from real estate developer William H. Hay. She immediately spent the equivalent of the property’s value on improvements, including the construction of the swimming pool. A year later, she purchased the estate outright. She informally called it the "Garden of Alla," a reference to herself, of course, as well as to The Garden of Allah, a bestselling 1904 British novel by Robert Smythe Hichens that by 1918 it had been adapted into both a hit play and a popular film.

Born in Yalta and educated in Swiss boarding schools, Nazimova brought European-style sophistication to the Movie Colony. On Saturday nights, she hosted a salon at Hayvenhurst where writers, musicians, artists, actors and others gathered to discuss art, literature and other rarified topics. On Sundays, her poolside parties for young women were whispered about all over town. Among her protégées over the years were Jean Acker and Natacha From the 1921 edition of Who’s Who on the Screen: Rambova -- later Rudolph Valentino’s first and second “Nazimova, star of Nazimova Productions, is wives, respectively – and future film director Dorothy recognized as one of the most distinguished actresses of the age…Ever since her debut on the Arzner, among others. English-speaking stage her career has been one of unbroken successes. Her work in her recent Metro Nazimova’s first films for Metro were mostly hits. She Productions…stamps her as one of the screen’s bombed in 1923, however, with a self-funded, highly greatest stars.” artistic production of Oscar Wilde’s “Salome.” Her film career entered a death spiral, and in 1926, facing 8150 SUNSET | ALLA NAZIMOVA SOCIETY 9 bankruptcy, she converted the estate into a hotel, which she marketed under her personal brand – the Garden of Alla Hotel. She threw a grand opening party in January 1927 that lasted until dawn. The hotel was popular from the start, but Nazimova could not make a go of it and sold the property back to William H. Hay, its original owner, before returning to Broadway. Hay eventually sold it to Central Holding Corporation, who, in 1930, changed “Alla” to “Allah” – and the Garden of Allah Hotel was born.

3. GARDEN OF ALLAH HOTEL

Nothing interrupted the continual tumult that was life at the Garden of Allah. Now and then the men in white came with a van and took somebody away, or bankruptcy or divorce or even jail claimed a participant in its strictly unstately sarabands. Nobody paid any mind. - Lucius Beebe

The Garden was an immediate draw among the movie crowd, many of whom would live there for months or even years at a time. They worked hard and played Looking southeast at the Garden of Allah Hotel around 1930: 1. Sunset hard, often partying into the morning Blvd., 2. Havenhurst Ave., 3. Crescent Heights Blvd., 4. Garden of Allah main building, 5. Swimming pool. Still-Standing: A. The Granville, B. The Tuscany, hours in each other's villas, by the pool C. Savoy Plaza, D. La Fontaine, E. Colonial House and in the nightclubs that sprang up along the Sunset Strip.

It quickly became a popular celebrity trysting spot, perhaps because it was the only A-list establishment in town that did not employ hotel detectives to snoop on its guests. There were no walls around the perimeter, which made it easy to come and go unnoticed, as young Gary Cooper routinely did when visiting his paramour, the Countess di Frasso, a.k.a. American heiress Dorothy Caldwell Taylor. (The Countess is probably best remembered today for her next affair, with Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, who likely also kept an apartment at the Garden later on.)

Silent film siren Clara Bow was among the first guests to register. Later, all four of the Marx brothers moved in, with their wives and even their father. Ginger Rogers lived there with her mother. Errol Flynn met one of his wives, Lili D’Amita, there. Humphrey Bogart was a three-time resident – his last stay was in the mid-1940s when he was courting Lauren Bacall, who lived in another villa with her mother. Frank Sinatra lived next door to future wife Ava Gardner when she was married to bandleader Artie Shaw.

In addition to famous actors, the hotel was, as noted previously, also the Hollywood home of the Algonquin Round Tablers, especially Dorothy Parker and the Garden's unofficial host, Robert Benchley, as well as a home-away-from-home for best-selling writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Somerset Maugham and Lillian Hellman and world-famous musical artists, from Cole Porter to Sergei Rachmaninoff. Bugsy Siegel's successor, Mickey Cohen, rented a villa for a while, as did future Pres. Ronald Reagan, who stayed at the Garden in the period after his split with Jane Wyman and before he married Nancy Davis, who also happened to be Nazimova’s goddaughter.

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3. END OF AN ERA

When Nazimova returned to Hollywood in 1938, she and her partner, Glesca Marshall, rented Villa 24 at the Garden of Allah. Over the next six years, Nazimova, the former leading lady, appeared in supporting roles in four A-list films, including her last movie, "Since You Went Away," in 1944. She died the following year after suffering a heart attack in her villa.

The Sunset Strip began to lose its luster in the early 1950s as gambling interests migrated to Las Vegas. The Garden of Allah, which had begun to appear dated, also went into a decline. In May 1955, Cornelius Vanderbilt "Sonny" Whitney and a partner bought the Garden. They closed it briefly for renovations and partnered with Beverly Hills-based Lee Hotels chain to run it. But even with the improvements and new management, the hotel failed to turn a profit. Whitney and partners sold it the following year for $375,000 to Frank Ehrhart, former manager of the Mocambo nightclub on the Strip. Ehrhart instituted another round of renovations and then flipped the property a year later, selling it to investors Morris Markowitz and Isadore Rosenus for $500,000.

Unfortunately, Roseneus died not long after the sale. In the spring of 1959, his widow, Beatrice, and Markowitz sold the Garden to Lytton Savings & Loan for $775,000. When Lytton announced plans to raze the hotel and replace it with a new headquarters building, a Times headline writer waxed poetic: "The Garden of Allah, Once an Oasis, Faces Kismet." In August, Bart Lytton, the S&L’s owner, hosted a farewell party for the Garden. Hundreds were expected but well over a thousand people showed up, including a few old timers from the silent movie days. During the party, which was sufficiently newsworthy to be covered by Life magazine, Nazimova’s films were projected on a wall above the pool.

The bulldozers came the next day. By New Year’s 1960, the hotel, its villas and the landscaped grounds had indeed met their fates. When the Lytton headquarters branch opened six months later, the only trace of the Garden of Allah that remained was a scale model Bart Lytton had commissioned and put on display under glass in a small arched structure about the size of a toll booth that he called “the Garden of Allah Pavillion.”

Sheilah Graham mentioned the model toward the end of her history of the hotel, The Garden of Allah, published in 1970. “Today, where the pool and villas stood so securely,” she wrote, “where [Robert] Benchley laughed and Scott [Fitzgerald] weaved along the narrow paths, all that remains on the Sunset Blvd. plot at the foot of Laurel Canyon is a model of the Garden in a glass case. It remains unnoticed by the new nonconformists, who frequent the area, the hippies of the Sunset Strip.”

The gazebo-like structure in the left of the drawing was the Garden of Allah Pavillion that was built to house the 1959 model. 8150 SUNSET | ALLA NAZIMOVA SOCIETY 11

ADDENDUM 8150 SUNSET SITE MAP

For a full-size, interactive view, visit 8150sunset.com.