The Garden of Allah: The
confidential hotel that housed Hollywood’s greatest secrets
Poppy Burton
Mon 11 December 2023 22:15, UK
From the late 1920s onwards,
Hollywood‘s biggest stars found brief reprieve from the public eye in a
picturesque hotel nestled quietly between Sunset Boulevard and Laurel Canyon.
Though one of the best-kept secrets among the Hollywood elite, the Garden of
Allah soon became known as a den of iniquity, welcoming the excess of its famed
guests. Actors, writers, directors, and even a president once stopped by. Some
of them stayed for months on end, others only a night, but all revelled in the
parties and privacy it offered.
The hotel’s free-wheeling embrace
of debauchery might be best summed up in its embrace of resident “jazzy baby”
Clara Bow. Said to be the inspiration behind Babylon’s Nellie LaRoy, Bow was
pegged as the next “it girl” of the Flapper era – until her wild antics and
sexuality began to dominate headlines. Cruel reporters cooked up stories of
incest and bestiality, all untrue, but in the court of public opinion, they may
as well have been.
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Francis Ford Coppola's brief
message about love
Inside the confines of the
Garden, however, she was free of judgement – and was said to have enjoyed many
a cocktail hour, occasionally diving into the pool, martini in hand and donning
a full-length gown. The reason Bow could comfortably let loose was the hotel
had discreet security and traded on its ability to put guests at ease – away
from prying eyes. Management understood their esteemed guests needed a place to
do so, and even more crucially – they didn’t ask questions.
Nobody batted an eye when F.
Scott Fitzgerald crawled on his knees from his bungalow to the front desk after
a Scotch binge. They did, however, ask if calling a doctor might be wise. “No
doctor,” he was said to have cried. “Just get me somewhere I can die in peace!”
Fitzgerald had been spending
months holed up in one of the Garden’s 25 rental bungalows, writing off the
$400 charge as a necessary working expense. Struggling with the pressures of
Hollywood writing – not to mention mounting debts and alcoholism, he took off
to the Garden for a creative rebalance.
He famously wrote himself a
postcard while staying there: “Dear Scott – How are you?” he asked himself.
“Have been meaning to come in and see you. I have [been] living at the Garden
of Allah. Yours, Scott Fitzgerald.” His biographer later wrote a book about the
Garden, its secret cultural importance making itself known in the writers it
sheltered.
It’s dazzling that while we can
point to places like the Stork Club and the Chateau Marmont as hotbeds of Old
Hollywood glamour, The Garden of Allah flew somewhat under the radar. Attended
by Frank Sinatra and Ronald Reagan in its time, maybe it’s the best testament
to it being Hollywood’s best-kept secret.