Word: gardens
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Last week architects were busy drawing plans for an office building to replace the Garden-long since gone to seed-while bartenders and chambermaids were out hunting new jobs. Come fall, bulldozers will grunt across the grounds, toppling the tall cypresses and pepperwoods. Tons of earth will be dumped into the swimming pool in which wobbly guests once cooled their hangovers. Soon, sightseeing buses will drive along the curve of Sunset Boulevard between Schwab's Drugstore and the gabled Marmont Chateau, with rubberneck guides remembering nasally: "Alla Nazimova lived here once. Paramount built her a mansion. The swimming pool...
...White. Like Tom Wolfe before them, tourists will find it hard to believe that there was once a Garden of Allah. But it blossomed in lush profusion from the day in 1927 when Nazimova turned her once private domain into a super hostelry; 23 guest villas were added to the great stucco manor house-and an h was added to the mistress' first name, recalling the movie Garden of Allah. Alla objected to the spelling, but her modest protests were drowned in the gin-laced hubbub...
...Nothing," says Columnist Lucius Beebe, who became a steady visitor, "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...
Splash in the Night. Everyone was delighted when Humorist Benchley moved in, accompanied by Columnist John McClain, who trundled Bob from party to party in a wheelbarrow when walking was out of the question. At the Garden Benchley created some of his most memorable epigrams. There, when a friend said that drink was a slow poison, Bob, nose down in a beaker of martinis, answered: "That's all right. I'm in no hurry...
...ending. The old faces were fading fast; the place was soon overrun by roaches and call girls. The last big spender was a happy drunk from Kansas City who made his fortune turning out horror pictures for the kiddies. For months last year, all drinks served in the Garden bar were put on his tab, and eventually he broke the record rung up by Benchley and his pals...