Ghost Hotel
Jean Harlow, Douglas Fairbanks, Joan Crawford...they all hang out here. It's the legendary Ambassador Hotel, which closed its doors the same month I arrived in Los Angeles back in 1989. It had been dying a slow death ever since a terrible day in June of 1968, when Sirhan Sirhan shot Robert Kennedy in the kitchen of the old Cocoanut Grove.
It was the Cocoanut Grove that put this place on the map. The nightclub got its name from some prop palm trees that were leftover from a Rudolph Valentino movie. The first Oscar was handed out here. Marilyn Monroe was discovered poolside. Howard Hughes had a permanent suite. It's been in a million movies. In fact, it's where Dustin Hoffman hooked up with Mrs. Robinson.
Years ago, one of my many odd jobs found me working here as a grunt on a tv show. I was putting down cardboard so the crew's equipment wouldn't scuff up the nasty, rotting carpet in the lobby. In walked Donald Trump and his entourage. Turns out he had just bought the place, and was planning on tearing it down to build the world's tallest building. The 90's recession and the L.A. School District changed his plans.
They're supposedly turning it into a school, but for the moment - it remains empty, except for a hundred or so feral cats...and the ghosts of old hollywood.
posted by Josh Troy at 11:25 PM
4 Comments:
That is a cool pic; very spooky feeling to it. Do you still work in t.v. or similar occupation? Sorry, I haven't read all about you yet...
Rachel Ann
willowgreen.mu.nu
I haven't worked in TV in years. I ran off and sold my soul to the internet gods. Every so often I work on a commercial for my company - but most of the time I'm busy writing marketing emails for my company. There were a few fun years in radio & TV when I was writing and producing commercials, but I needed something more stable.
Thanks for visiting my blog.
A strange repository of time, in which Trump was no less a ghost than Gable (and it would be fair to say Trump is probably more clueless than the average ghost). I'd love to see this place. If they turn it into a school, it's bound to generate a whole new mythology of its own.
UPDATE
Site of RFK murder faces wrecking ball
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA -- The Ambassador Hotel, where Hollywood stars once mingled and Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, may soon be partly razed to make way for a new school under a plan that would save some of the hotel's more notable features.
Los Angeles schools Supt. Roy Romer said Saturday that he has chosen a $318.2 million plan that would raze most of the structure but maintain portions of the historic ballroom where Kennedy gave his last speech in 1968.
The Cocoanut Grove nightclub would be restored and used as the school's main auditorium.
Bungalows that once housed F. Scott Fitzgerald, Rudolph Valentino and Albert Einstein would be razed.
The plan, devised after years of debate, is a compromise intended to meet school space needs while answering concerns of preservation groups.
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