Turn In Your Top Hat & Tails: Beverly Hills Ambassador Laid Off
(AP Photo/Nick Ut)
Not even the Ambassador of Beverly Hills is safe from economic cutbacks. Gregg Donovan, the 51-year-old former concierge and personal valet to Bob Hope who has been greeting visitors to the lux and lavish 90210 from the corner of Via Rodeo and Rodeo Drive for more than a decade, has been asked to turn in his top hat, frilly white shirt and signature red fancy coat by the Beverly Hills Conference & Visitors Bureau that reportedly said they could no longer afford him.
"Gregg Donovan, the jovial, stentorian-voiced actor who has spent much of the past dozen years in top hat and tails giving directions, posing for photos, promoting local businesses and bellowing in dozens of languages, 'Welcome to Beverly Hills! You have arrived,' is leaving," reports the AP.
Called "the face of the city" by local businesses and an "institution" by Nate 'n Als mayor Larry King, locals are Indeed concerned considering that Donovan's face is also "plastered right on the visitors maps handed out all over town, as well as on T-shirts in some of the souvenir stores," notes CSB Local.
Under the terms of separation showed to the AP, Donovan was asked to "relinquish his red ambassador jacket, as well as the rights to any photos, videos or other materials representing him as the city's ambassador. Donovan, who has posted dozens of photos of himself with celebrities on his website, has refused to sign." According to the AP, Donovan says going forward, he'd be willing to take a similar job, perhaps in a place like Hollywood.