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These days, the Roosevelt Hotel is all about partying. After the painstaking restoration of its Spanish-Moorish lobby, with its hand painted beams, tiled floors and leaded glass windows, the hotel is home to the Tropicana Bar, where guests get in free till 9pm (How generous!) and long lines develop of the young and the beautiful. They don't hold a candle to the older residents of the hotel though. The Roosevelt is rumored to be haunted. Not just haunted either, but lousy with ghosts.
Built on what was once strawberry fields, the Roosevelt opened in 1927. The first academy awards were held here in 1929 (then they were called the "Merit Awards.") The Blossom Room was used for wrap parties, and other receptions (including those for the winners of Queen for a Day and This is Your Life.) In the 1930s, the hotel opened the Cinegrill for jazz performances, Great artists and writers like Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Dali attended. Mary Martin and Eartha Kitt opened to rave reviews there in the 1950s.
It's said that Bill "Bojangles" Robinson taught Shirley Temple their famous staircase dance in the Lobby there. Errol Flynn supposedly made gin in the barbershop during prohibition.
Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift both stayed here; they say that their ghosts still wander the halls. Sometimes Marilyn is reflected in mirrors. When the wind blows off the desert, you can hear Clift playing his bugle. Even in the ultra hip Tropicana Bar, the ghosts have gotten past the red velvet rope and walk among the glitterati.
The Roosevelt Hotel 7000 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA
Exterior photo by Rice and D, Interior by Eric Hernandez, via flickr
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Before they went all Lindsay Lohan by the poolside! trendy and did the remodel, the Roosevelt had one of the best photo and memorabilia Hollywood history displays/mini-museum set up on the mezzanine level. I was so devastated to see it go (and I wonder what became of it?). I definitely heard it was haunted, as is the rumor for the Knickerbocker over on Ivar.
Oh, I remember the 80s when it was cheap enough but cool enough that all of the musicians lived there. We went to so many parties, and Marilyn Monroe was always spotted.