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A breakfast club in Griffith Park has been LA's best-kept secret for 100 years
Panoramic photo of attendees at the original clubhouse of The Los Angeles Breakfast Club in 1927.
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Courtesy Los Angeles Breakfast Club
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It’s a Wednesday morning at around 6:30 a.m., and people are streaming into Friendship Auditorium in Los Feliz — a spacious venue operated by the city typically used for weddings and other ceremonies. But this morning, what’s on the menu is a hearty breakfast, the chance to “flip the egg,” and an art lecture from Robocop himself, Peter Weller.
That is just one part of the weekly meeting at the Los Angeles Breakfast Club — a gathering that began 100 years ago for the city’s rich and famous to share a meal and have fun while learning something enriching along the way. Today, it remains one of Los Angeles' best-kept secrets.
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Listen: What we learned about the Los Angeles Breakfast Club
The weekly breakfast gathering that once featured people like Walt Disney and former president Calvin Coolidge as members — has turned 100 this year. Writer James Bartlett talks to LAist's Josie Huang.
Walt Disney on his initiation day with Guests and Mickey, September 28, 1932.
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Courtesy Los Angeles Breakfast Club.
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Joe DiMaggio being initiated on Ham the Sawhorse, with Club Manager Harold Link and member Don Lake, August 18, 1943
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Courtesy Los Angeles Breakfast Club.
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“The original founders, if they came today, would still recognize so much of what’s happening. Most of the traditions date back to the 1920s,” said Los Angeles Breakfast Club historian Rachel Skytt, co-author of the forthcoming book, The Los Angeles Breakfast Club: A Century of Hollywood, Hi-Jinx, and Ham & Eggs.
The club, Skytt and her co-authors say, started after a group of avid horsemen, including local banker Marco Hellman and merchant Maurice De Mond, finished their ride along the trails near Griffith Park.
“They were wealthy businessmen pretending to be cowboys,” said Sandi Hemmerlein, a co-author of the book. “Naturally, they worked up an appetite on horseback, so one of them arranged to serve breakfast out of a chuckwagon.”
Eventually, the group moved the festivities down to a nearby riding academy, hired a chef and some waiters, and built a picnic table in the shape of a horseshoe.
A postcard featuring exterior of The LABC's second clubhouse on Los Feliz Blvd (1937-1965) and cryptogram.
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Courtesy Los Angeles Breakfast Club.
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A postcard with driving directions to The LABC's second clubhouse on Los Feliz Blvd (1937-1965).
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Courtesy Los Angeles Breakfast Club.
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Initial membership consisted only of men, but women attended as guests and speakers at the club almost from the start, with opera singer Amelita Galli-Curci as the first honorary member in 1926.
“During that time, the Breakfast Club had two sister clubs, which were women-only,” Skytt said.
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It wasn’t until 1981 when the men’s chapter — by that time known as the Los Angeles Breakfast Club — became officially co-ed.
Who’s who in L.A.
Calvin Coolidge and Grace Coolidge on their initiation day with movie star Mary Pickford and others, February 19, 1930
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Courtesy Los Angeles Breakfast Club.
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Since the beginning, the club’s ethos was strongly nonpartisan and nonpolitical — and more about fun than networking and business. Hemmerlein mentions that bitter newspaper rivals Harry Chandler and William Randolph Hearst were photographed shaking hands and smiling here in 1926.
“De Mond and Hellman were both Jewish, and lots of the movie business members too: Jack and Sam Warner, Samuel Goldwyn, Jesse Lasky, Carl Laemmle, Louis B. Mayer, Sid Grauman,” Hammerlein says.
The club also had at least one Native American member, movie director Edwin Carewe.
Over the years, past members include Edgar Rice Burroughs, Joe DiMaggio, Ronald Reagan, Walt Disney, John Philip Sousa, Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson, and Babe Ruth.
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And every one of them has had their hand put onto a plate of fried eggs and learned the club’s special wrist-rotating handshake, a ritual known as “flipping the egg.”
A day at the club
The Los Angeles Breakfast Club's "Ham-and-Egg Cryptogram" is a coded chant recited at their weekly meetings.
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James Bartlett
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LAist
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Alex Evans, Co-Executive Director of the Bob Baker Marionette Theater, puppeteers Bull the Frog for the Los Angeles Breakfast Club, February 17, 2021
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Courtesy Los Angeles Breakfast Club.
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That special handshake has endured for decades. But today’s attendees — anywhere from 100 to 200 each time — are a much more diverse bunch. Some have colored dyed hair, while others wear big hats, tiki shirts, or breakfast-themed clothes, and there’s a man carrying a large squirrel hand puppet.
But first, the day starts with the bracing breakfast of ham and eggs and other food staples.
Then the lights go down.
The Roosters, regulars of the club, deliver a friendly heckle during a breakfast meeting in February 2024.
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Larry Underhill
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Courtesy Los Angeles Breakfast Club
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A breakfast meeting being held at Friendship Auditorium
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Larry Underhill
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Courtesy Los Angeles Breakfast Club.
)
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On this particular morning, conductor of ceremonies Kahlil Nelson begins the proceedings by singing his version of “The Lambeth Walk” — the classic song from the musical Me and My Girl — with lyrics about Buckaroo Bonzai and Robocop as an affectionate preamble to the day’s guest lecturer, actor and art historian Weller.
Then everyone gets on their feet, doing some light stretching, led by exercise goddess Carole Nese, who is sporting multi-colored LED wristbands. Naturally, everyone groans melodramatically as they bend to touch their toes: This club loves a good ham.
Today, there is a new member initiation: A woman sits on Ham the Sawhorse, blindfolded, as Club President Mickey Corcoran asks her to repeat a specially written membership vow based around the initiate’s hobbies and interests.
The main course of the morning is the lecture, the subjects of which have ranged from Googie architecture and old-school restaurants to the city’s parrot population.
Today, Weller is holding court on Italian art throughout history.
The Los Angeles Breakfast Club podium with two fresh sunny-side-up eggs ready for initiations.
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Christopher Gibson
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LAist
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Judging by the audience reaction, the talk is a hit, and Weller concludes by saying:
“You guys are the warmest and strangest group of people I’ve ever met!”
Quite a compliment coming from the man who starred in the movie adaptation of William S. Burrough’s Naked Lunch.
How to join and how to visit
Los Angeles Breakfast Club meets every Wednesday at 7 a.m. Fees and details on membership can be found at www.labreakfastclub.com
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