The Hotel: With a Smile

Modern hotels claim luxury with a color telephone in the bathroom and an electric shoeshine kit in the closet; old-style elegance is today as vestigial as the ear lobe. Among the brass, glass and steel chains that proliferate across the country, the few fine old hotels left shine like solid gold pieces. The best of the remaining best is a sprawl of pink and green stucco called the Beverly Hills Hotel, which last week turned 50 years old with style.

When it was built in 1912 for $500,000, the Beverly Hills Hotel sat among bean fields, overlooked a bridle path named Sunset Boulevard. There were no studio commissaries, nor even any Romanoff’s, for the early Hollywood settlers to hang around in. The Beverly Hills provided a lobby with a blazing fire and a bar, and pilgrims like W. C. Fields, John Barrymore, Gene Fowler and Will Rogers came down from the hills and up from the canyons to seek their sustenance.

Tackles & Buttons. As the movies flourished, so did the hotel. Its patrons built their homes around it: Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford set their Pickfair high in the hills above it, so did Barrymore, Harold Lloyd and Tom Mix. Will Rogers and Darryl Zanuck played polo nearby, stopped so often at the hotel bar that it was and is still called the Polo Lounge. There were off-screen sporting events: Tom Mix once was sent to the carpet in a flying tackle by an autograph hound; Cartoonist George McManus unscrewed a button marked “Press” from a men’s room urinal, affixed it to his lapel and crashed a swank party as a newspaperman. But of more lasting interest was the hotel’s impeccable service, a concept originally executed by, and credited to. the Beverly Hills’s Hernando Courtright, who bought the hotel in 1943. Current owner Ben Silberstein, who took over ten years later, has sedulously maintained the tradition. The Beverly Hills has 1½ employees for every guest, the highest ratio of any hotel in the country.

Loving Care. Whether a guest pays $16 a day for a small single or $160 for a four-room bungalow, he is welcomed with flowers; though a celebrity only to his immediate family, he is showered with care and attention. Moments after registering, he can pick up a telephone in his room and find himself greeted by name. The secret is a “VIP” card typed in sextuplicate and immediately distributed among the hotel staff. By the time he checks out, the VIP card will be completed by notations of the guest’s preferences in accommodations, flowers and liquor. The lady who “can’t stand green” is kept in rose. Because RCA’s General Sarnoff prefers Suite 486 in a wing of the hotel that is not air-conditioned, special 220-volt lines are run to the room, air-conditioner installed, along with (naturally) an RCA color television set. Shell Oil Co.’s Director H.S.M. Burns likes “Wild Turkey” bourbon, finds a fifth of it waiting for him when he arrives. Commander Whitehead, besides a gross or two of Schweppes, is also provided with a bottle of Beefeater’s gin and a key to the pool for his early-morning swim.

Extra-special guests get extra-special treatment, including the literal red carpet rolled out to greet them: three beds of tulips were planted in anticipation of the visit of The Netherlands’ Queen, Juliana, thoughtfully came into bloom around her bungalow the day she arrived. A teapot was kept under 24-hour surveillance in Indonesia President Sukarno’s room, should he want a spot at any time. And to a bungalow sometimes occupied by Eccentric Millionaire Howard Hughes, midnight requests for odd items—once, it was only an upside-down cake—are promptly delivered. The hotel boasts that its kitchen can produce anything upon demand, even supplies a special $1 sirloin-carrot-and-peaburger for dogs. As a result of such tender, loving care, the occupancy rate has stayed above 90% for the last ten years, and the Beverly Hills grosses some $6,000,000 a year, making it the most profitable hotel, room for room, in the world. With this kind of loyal clientele, the Beverly Hills scorns the convention trade, which is the mainstay of lesser establishments.

Lounges & Lanais. The hotel facilities, even for Hollywood, are spectacular. The bean fields, carefully tilled and planted, have yielded a lush landscape valued at $1,000,000; paths lined with giant palm trees wind throughout the wooded 15½-acre site, and plants spill up and out across patios, creating private vales only 50 yards from public bars; lounges open onto lanais heavy with the smell of orange trees. The setting is comfortable enough for the local colony, for whom it is a kind of family club and also affords a perfect stage for starlets or would-be starlets who display themselves with calculated naiveté around the pool, reasonably confident that one producer-director-executive is behind one pair of the watching dark glasses.

Behind the scenes moves the hotel staff of 500, including 17 bellboys available, night and day, to carry messages across the city by hand, 24 telephone operators, two tennis pros, and one fulltime lifeguard, all dedicated to the proposition that guests are people with names, not just keys. Explains Owner Silberstein: “Every guest wants to be recognized. The ego of man is the same throughout the world. We have to cater to the whims of our guests, and we do.”