There are new hotels popping up all over LA. From the Dream Hollywood to floundering The James along the Sunset Strip and the recently unveiled Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills
with a rooftop pool to top all others. But even with their new
amenities, these hotels can't claim to be sold-out on a hot summer
weekend. Enter The Beverly Hills Hotel.
After 105-years in business, the iconic hotel is proving the unexpected
summer hotpot for incognito celebrities and international elite that
often stay a month at a time - sometimes longer.
There are two sides to The Beverly Hills Hotel.
One is for visiting guests of the hotel's two restaurants and bar, who
are ushered unknowingly under the striped awning and away from guest
areas by unobtrusive security staff. The other is for hotel residents
that pass leisurely in their hotel robes and through the cushy striped
corridors of the original hotel structure that was built as a bucolic
refuge of weekend socializing in the Santa Monica Mountains halfway
between Los Angeles and the sea. Famous designers and architects still
linger from Paul Williams that penned the Crescent Wing and its Fountain
Room to the 5-miles of banana-leaf wallpaper added in the 1940s by the
designer Don Loper - who some guests still recall with his lanky stature
and fashionable sandals. Most recently designer Adam D. Tihany revamped
the lobby and guest rooms, refreshing and modernizing even the Polo
Lounge where you can still envision Will Rogers and his muddy polo
boots, Charlie Chaplin in his favorite Booth No. 1 and Marlene Dietrich
protesting the mandatory skirt-policy for women that was later
abandoned.
What many consider the true trademark of The Beverly Hills Hotel
is the staff. Housekeepers regularly beam of their 15-years of service
while a handyman touches-up paint and recalls the hotel's previous
owners, that dates back to 1996. By the pool it's impossible not to
daydream of Esther Williams on her morning swims if you can look away
from the modern-day celebs that slip in and out of the Cabana Café
mostly-unfettered by the public. And it is that discretion that makes
the hotel work so well, as the line between service and guests is
tightly maintained whether on one of the poolside loungers or chatting
up the waiters inside the Polo Lounge. And as so many of our readers jet
off to Saint-Tropez and the Seychelles for the summer, others fly in
the opposite direction to spend weeks if not months in the
truly-decadent luxury of The Beverly Hills Hotel.
