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The Chateau Marmont, a towering
presence on the Sunset Strip, has for sixty-five years been a reel-life version
of Rick’s café in Casablanca. Everyone who was anyone in Hollywood – or
aspired to be – has stayed there, often for weeks or months at a time. Like
Rick’s, it seems cheerfully relaxed but is very discreet. Greta Garbo signed in
as Harriet Brown and was left alone. Columbia Pictures boss Harry Cohn told two
of his wildest young stars, William Holden and Glenn Ford, “If you must get in
trouble, do it at the Chateau Marmont,” and rented the small penthouse for their
parties. Howard Hughes settled into the largest penthouse and spied on starlets
gathered around the pool. An unknown Warren Beatty took an eight-dollar room
and was locked out for not paying. Judy Garland played the piano in the lobby,
and James Dean climbed in a window of director Nicholas Ray’s bungalow during
the first reading of Rebel Without a Cause. It was there that Roman
Polanski spent his last days in the United States, eluding nosy reporters.
Conceived as a
fashionable apartment tower during a real estate boom, the Marmont opened in
Febuary 1929. It was inspired by the Chateau Amboise, a royal retreat on the
Loire, but it as built of steel and concrete to withstand earthquakes, and has
proved amazingly durable. High rents discouraged tenants, and the building was
soon sold and turned into a hotel. To furnish it, the new owner bought
extravagant pieces at Depression-era estate sales and moved them around to suit
favorite guests.
The Marmont
aged gracefully, retaining its dignity and the loyalty of it devoted guests
through several threadbare decades. That presented a challenge to the hotelier
and restaurateur André Balazs, who bought it in 1990. How could he make
essential improvements while preserving its raffish character?
“I felt I have inherited
a cultural icon, so I was very cautious at first,” Balazs says. His goal was to
reinforce the feeling of an urban oasis, a place that would run smoothly but
have a strong sense of history. “I wanted it to evoke the past and the way
Hollywood coveted European culture, but to make it a bit quirky.”
He
rejected the model
rooms created by three different designers before entrusting the task to art
director Shawn Hausman and Fernardo Santangelo – formerly a painter’s assistant
– who had demonstrated their skill in his clubs but had no experience with
hotels. “It takes time to find the right vocabulary with a designer, and I
wanted rooms a guest could put a personal stamp on,” Balazs says. Hausman came
up with a layered look, mixing furnishings of different styles and periods. “I
have been fond of the Marmont since I was a child, visiting friends who stayed
there,” he says. “It was important to me not to make dramatic changes. I was
inspired by things that were there – a built-in vanity, an old stove – and I
wanted to create the feeling you get in the West Hollywood bungalow courts of
this period.”
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Public areas were
upgraded, and the entire hotel was recarpeted and repainted in an deliberately
unassertive way. The frescoed vaults of the Gothic portico were cleaned, and
the lawn was relandscaped. Santangelo spent several hours going through old
registration cards and got caught up in the history of the place. He noticed
that the living room off of he lobby was never used because the lighting was
terrible and there was only one set of chairs. He added lamps and sconces and
made groupings of chairs he scavenged from all over the city – an assortment
that might have been in storage since the hotel was new.
A different approach was
required for the pair of white stucco bungalows that Craig Ellwood built in 1956
at the top of the hilly site. Unlike the Spanish-style cottages down the slope,
these are subtly proportioned essays in minimalism by a leading modernist
architect of the postwar era – miniature versions of the three Case Study houses
he was then designing in Los Angeles. The flat roof canopies at the entranceway
and the terrace, onto which all the rooms open through sliding glass doors. An
earlier owner had missed the point, dressing up the sheer planes with moldings
and wrought iron, Spanish tiles and western-style furniture. Santangelo
stripped the shell and consulted books of the period to capture the simplicity
of the furnishings Ellwood preferred. The pieces he chose make it easy to
imagine that nothing has changed in forty years. He brought the same
consistency to the hotel penthouse, which s furnished in what Balazs calls
“Hollywood-mogul style,” much as Howard Hughes might have done it.
Surrounding the swimming
pool are nine cottages that were built in the thirties. Hausman designed
cottage 84 as a prototype for the others, giving it a comfortable mix of Mission
oak furniture, Wright-inspired fabrics and rattan chairs. There is a floral
frieze over the taupe paneling, recalling the Craftsman era, but the kitchen has
been equipped with a vintage refrigerator and a gleaming O’Keefe & Merritt stove
from the forties.
After five years if
fixing a few things, owners and designers have given the Marmont a fresh look.
Hausman notes that details, unnoticed by most, contribute to the mood – just as
they help actors on a set. Balazs admits he is a little obsessive, approving
every knob and switch as though it were his own home. “It’s a huge luxury to do
a commercial property this way,” he says. “Each room is unique, and we keep
correcting as we go along.” He has not neglected practical amenities. The
telephones and two vintage elevators are usually in working order, and lunch is
served in the garden. There is even a tiny gym in the attic, but little is made
of this lest anyone think the Marmont has sacrificed its principles and become like other hotels.
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