The Garden of Allah

It wasn't long after our family moved to Los Angeles in 1956 that my movie-loving mother and I hopped in the family Oldsmobile and set out to discover all we could about the old days of Hollywood.  We checked out stars' homes but her big thrill was seeing where famous places were located or once located.  On several weekends we would look for where the famous Hollywood Canteen had been located or the Chateau Marmont Hotel, the Mocambo nightclub or the offices of Photoplay, Modern Screen or Screen Stories (the bibles of our lives) and The Garden of Allah.

I barely remember seeing the Garden of Allah hotel but I do remember that it was in a state of disrepair.  It had apparently come a long way from being one of Hollywood's hot spots for so many years.  Mama regaled me with tales of the place... some likely quite true and some probably imagined.  Ok, so I added a little color, she used to say.  Over the years, however, the Garden of Allah has been mentioned in one biography or autobiography after another... scores and scores of them... and I've long been enveloped in some romantic haze about the place.

The 40-room, Spanish-style structure at 8152 Sunset Blvd. was originally built in 1913 by real estate tycoon, William Hays, as his private residence.  Sunset Blvd. was still a dirt road.  Six years later he sold it to Alla Nazimova, one of the most famous of the silent screen stars.  While she owned the property, it was called the Garden of Alla (without the h) for obvious reasons. 

By 1926 she had it converted into a residential hotel, adding 25 separate, red-tiled villas around the nearly three-acre property. (More may have been added after she sold the hotel... note the ad at the end.)  She also had a swimming pool built which became one of its best features due as much as anything to the fact that it was the largest private pool in Los Angeles and one of the first to have underwater lighting.  She had it designed in the shape of the Black Sea so that it would always remind her of her native Crimea.

Nazimova designed various salons where patrons could discuss theater, literature, art and philosophy with passionate abandon.  If one wanted to take those conversations poolside, that could be accomplished.  On Sundays and some special evenings they were equally passionate about abandoning clothing.   Of course, one could discuss philosophy so much more openly if one were in the buff.

To understand what went on at the Garden of Alla, one must understand a bit about Alla Nazimova.  Born in 1879 Russia, she had a sad home life that was crowded and entailed poverty and beatings from her father.  Ultimately she spent a number of years in foster homes.  She was an accomplished actress before she immigrated to the U.S. in 1905.  It didn't take long for her to become a Broadway star since she was considered to be a most gifted interpreter of Henrik Ibsen.  Always flamboyant, imperious and determined to have her way, she changed her name from Miriam Leventon to Alla Nazimova when she began her stage career, partly because her father, who found acting disreputable, insisted on it.  In her later years, as her fame grew, she was known only as Nazimova.

Entering films in 1916, she was a bona fide star two years later.  In 1920 she made Salome, a decided flop but a scandalous film that may have not done much for her career but it served her perfectly well personally.  She had her special way of enjoying a madcap existence.  Since she liked having control, she began producing her own films.  Unfortunately not many went to see them and she suffered financial setbacks.  Turning The Garden of Alla into a hotel was, in part, to offset her financial woes.

I am more aware of her due to the hotel than I am for being an actress.  The only two films I have ever seen her in, both talkies, were Blood and Sand (1941), as Tyrone Power's mother, and Since You Went Away (1945), her penultimate film, as Claudette Colbert's friend and coworker.  I probably heard about her the first time when my mother and I were in front of the hotel. 

Her good friend Greta Garbo's most famous film was Camille (1936) but Nazimova made it first in 1921 with her own good friend, Rudolph Valentino.  (When his life and career were disected in the 1977 film, Valentino, Leslie Caron played Nazimona.)  She embarked on an early marriage in 1899 with a fellow acting student and then a 13-year relationship with a gay man that ended in 1925, but the latter, at least, was a ruse to cover-up her lesbianism.  

In her day, she was lesbian royalty.  She palled around with the noted Hollywood sapphos of the day... Pola Negri, Evelyn Brent, Lilyan Tashman and Nita Naldi.  Soon Garbo, Dietrich and others would join the sewing circle, a term coined by Nazimova.  And when The Garden of Allah was in full swing, it was known to appeal to several groups... lesbians and gay men, actors, musicians and writers or any combination thereof.  Within these groups one had to be the right kind... mainly moneyed and terribly talented in one's field.  Classy appealed to management but one was encouraged to leave it at the front desk.  Staying on the QT was desirable.  The hotel, nonetheless, had a wild reputation, all very deserved.  When Nazimova heard the term debauchery
bandied about, she knew she was doing something right. 

Playwright-novelist and high-ranking Hollywood lesbian, Mercedes de Acosta, Garbo's ever-present lover, said when I was in Hollywood (in the 1930s) it was considered a wild and, in a manner of speaking, a morally lost place.  The whole world thought of it as a place of mad nightlife, riotous living, sexual orgies... uncontrolled extravagances, unbridled love affairs and-- in a word
-- sin.  (Wow, good thing that couldn't happen anymore.)  And it was all on the menu at The Garden of Allah.  

Certain circles in North America and Europe knew where to go if they were in Los Angeles.  If one were already living in Los Angeles and in between marriages, the hotel was the place to go or better yet, to rent.  If one were in a marriage but needed a completely safe place to tryst with a squeeze, come on down.  Clothing optional... at the pool, in the shrubs or dashing between those stylish villas. 

There was a story of some legendary Broadway actress who responded to her bungalow doorbell with nothing on except a monkey on her shoulder.  The kid delivering a telegram was so shocked he slammed the telegram in the monkey's paw and fled.  He might be the only person at The Garden of Allah to ever be shocked.

You've heard of the casting couch but have you heard of the casting hotel?  Some of that carnal activity came with careers... or not.  Gay directors like George Cukor, James Whale and Edmund Goulding attended or held parties/auditions there, despite having their own beautiful homes.  Sometimes the Garden of Allah was just the place where you wanted to be.  Cole Porter could frequently be spotted.  Tallulah Bankhead, like many New Yorker celebrity types, stayed there.  She enjoyed pillow talk with her hostess (often) and Stanwyck, Crawford, Gary Cooper and Johnny Weismuller.   

Visitors were never alone for long at the Garden of Allah.  If they wanted to work quietly, they could.  If they wanted to get a little more rambunctious, shall we say, hey, no problem.  If one didn't indulge, one had to be cool.  Nazimova provided freedom of expression.  Freedom of partners.  Freedom from prying eyes.  Freedom. 

One was likely to hear the rat-a-tat-tat of typewriters during the day.  Writers flocked to The Garden of Allah, not always for the frolics that were provided, but as a sanctuary.  Sometimes out of one bungalow came the melodic clarinet of Benny Goodman  which added to the creative mood.  One could often be guaranteed of running into another writer if one wanted.  Frequent guests were Hemingway, Fitzgerald and a few of those Algonquin snobs such as Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott.  From England came Maugham and Coward who fell right into step with all the amenities of the famed hotel.

Nazimova in the hotel's library

The Garden of Allah comes up a number of times in bios (and autobiographies) of some of Hollywood's randier straight (or usually straight) males like Errol Flynn and his buddy David Niven and John Barrymore.  In between marriages, Ronald Reagan spent many a night there with this or that starlet.  It's assumed he knew at some point that Nazimova was his second wife's godmother.

Some folks lived there without participating in the lively shenanigans. Ginger Rogers lived in one of the bungalows with her eagle-eyed mother when they moved to L.A. from New York.  Ava Gardner resided there throughout her entire marriage to bandleader Artie Shaw.  It wasn't that long a stay.   Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, unmarried at the time, stayed when she was making Gone with the Wind and he was shooting Wuthering Heights.  Bogie and Bacall did some canoodling and were attacked once by his wife, Mayo Methot, providing some juicy fodder which the hotel didn't like.  Frank Sinatra was a short-time resident and in fact stayed in a bungalow next to Gardner and Shaw, not knowing she would one day be his wife.

As bad luck would have it, Nazimova, who thought The Garden of Allah would pull her out of movie star debt, fell deeper into debt and had to sell the hotel after just a couple of years after buying it.  If a reader gets the impression, with all that's been said, that she was around for years and years, well, she was... but not as the owner.  She lived in villa #24 until she died in 1945 and life at The Garden of Allah continued as always.  Nazimova still held court and had her occasional orgies with her famous friends at and in the pool she built.   

A more sobering side to story was that the hotel never really made a lot of money, for whatever reason.  Its brochure claimed refinement when it appears to be a little closer to something between chic bohemian and throw some paint on here.  Its food and service were nothing to brag about.  It even had rats hanging out in palm trees on the perimeter of the property.  Still, from start to finish, it was the only place certain people would consider.  It's understood the hotel's numerous dark entrances and exits were a perk. 

It went through several more ownership changes in the 30s, 40s and even into the 50s.  Apparently someone thought it could no longer compete on a number of levels and the decision to shutter came about in 1959, a year or so after my mother and I viewed it from our car.  I have forever since fantasized about being there, inside.  It is an institution to me if only because it was a part of the fabric of  Hollywood's entire Golden Age.

I think James Franco should make a movie about it.  He can write, direct and play Errol Flynn.  It can star all of today's lesbian actresses who will be dressed to the nines and wearing those fabulous wigs.  Cate could return again as Kate and show us that other side.  Oh yes.  We can have a couple of studly actors whose backsides would produce erotic feelings in audiences who watched them running between bungalows.  We can find reasonably similar-looking actors or non-actors to fill famous roles. Imagine the sets that could be done today.  Imagine that monkey and telegram.  If Franco could get HBO to do it, it could be raunchier... my preference.

Oh, perhaps I've gone too far.  I'll think about deleting that last paragraph.  

Next posting:
Movie review