Los Angeles during Oscar Week has come of age as a holiday destination.
This wasn’t always the case. Skipping town in the lead up to the Academy Awards is a tradition which harks back to Hollywood’s Golden Era, when a lineup of leading ladies preferred to spend their downtime on vacation rather than networking with their studio mogul bosses, who established the ceremony in 1929.
Katharine Hepburn began the exodus and was en route to Paris when the first of the four Oscars she ultimately claimed for the MGM drama “Morning Glory” was announced at the Ambassador Hotel in 1934.
A year later, as the ceremony kicked off at the Biltmore, Claudette Colbert was mink-clad and reclining in a limousine bound for Union Station, where she was set to board the Super Chief train destined for Manhattan.
But in today’s Hollywood, an appearance at the Oscars has the potential to reap actors lucrative brand endorsement deals that often exceed their film salaries. So, nominees are always front and center at the monolithic ceremonial venue, The Dolby Theatre, maximizing their time in front of the cameras. But those snubbed by the Academy also typically fail to make the cut for the A-list Oscar parties and often decamp to their Palm Springs hideaways or wait out their humiliation in Malibu. As for regular mortals, it may be impossible to attend the main event and the major soirees, but there’s definitely plenty to see and do in Tinseltown.
Dimitri Dimitrov, the maître d’ of the Sunset Tower Hotel’s bistro, The Tower Bar, a storied L.A. hot spot frequented by glitterati like Tom Ford, Valentino Garavani and Anjelica Huston, voices the operational philosophy that has evolved the atmosphere from haughty to accessible at the city’s finer hotels and has also inspired the host of public Oscar-themed events that are staged in the lead-up to the big night: “The regular client is the VIP,” believes Dimitrov.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Oscars’ official governing body, led the way, by recently commencing a grandly scaled unrestricted cultural program which peaks in 2017 with the opening of its $300 million dollar Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on Wilshire Boulevard, which will exhibit the “art, history and technology of cinema.”
The Academy also invites the public to celebrate its nominees at events like this year’s Oscar Concert of nominated scores and original songs. Screen wardrobes vying for the costume design prize (including the Pradas from “The Great Gatsby”), some that did not make the cut (the Ruth E. Carter ensembles donned by Oprah Winfrey for “Lee Daniels’ The Butler”), and last year’s winner (Jacqueline Durran’s “Anna Karenina” finery), are also on show at the Art of Motion Picture Costume Design, the free annual exhibition at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising Museum. The Writers Guild Theatre also waives its members-only rule for DocuDay on March 1, to run back-to-back screenings plus Q&As with the filmmakers nominated for the Documentary and Short Features prizes.
Meanwhile, Oscar nominees and presenters spend the nail-biting, seven-day stretch leading up to the telecast to-ing and fro-ing among the landmark hotels in and around West Hollywood and Beverly Hills attending lunches, dinners, cocktail parties and spa appointments. Checking in to one of the finer properties as the countdown to the ceremony commences is expensive, if not exorbitant. Some room rates triple. Photography is also prohibited in their public spaces. But a stay — or even downing cocktails at a glam watering hole at a legendary outpost like the London West Hollywood’s London Bar or the Peninsula’s Roof Garden — can prove utterly memorable, if celebrity watching is your thing. Being a fly on the wall as the Oscar frenzy envelops a hotel lobby, parking lot, or even a hair salon feels like having a walk-on role in a reality TV show. Except this one features exalted Hollywood stars and fashion heavyweights rather than housewives or pregnant teenage moms.
On Oscar Saturday, Ryan Seacrest and Giuliana Rancic, for example, co-host E!’s Countdown to the Red Carpet poolside at the Hollywood Roosevelt — where the first Academy Awards were hosted — while Piers Morgan will pontificate about the results from the lobby, where he engages a notable panel for his annual post-ceremony CNN special.
The Beverly Wilshire presents guests with their own Oscar, albeit one made by its pastry team with chocolate. While Warren Beatty once called home a studio in the south tower at this luxe Four Seasons hotel (it’s available), north-facing suites offer panoramic views of fashion central — namely, Rodeo Drive. The West Coast’s preeminent luxury retail thoroughfare is the place to spot “power stylists” (as The Hollywood Reporter describes the talent dressing Oscar contenders), who stalk in and out of the sleek flagships antagonizing the teams of fashion titans — like Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren and Christian Dior’s Raf Simons — with 11th hour sartorial demands.
Night of 100 Stars is the best of myriad Oscar viewing parties that are open to the public, even if this fundraiser supporting The Film Foundation (which is dedicated to motion picture preservation) attracts aged greats and the ticket price is $1,000. Double the number of celebrities touted by the festivity’s title typically gather in the Crystal Ballroom at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
The “Pink Palace” — as this famed salmon pink and cedar green Sunset Boulevard Beverly Hills Hotel is known — has remained the place to be in Hollywood since the 1940s, when architect Paul Revere Williams instructed Marlene Dietrich’s preferred Los Angeles couturier, Don Loper, to conceive its famed ‘Martinique Banana Leaf’ print wallpaper, and the leggy entertainer propped herself up at its restaurant/bar the Polo Lounge. Sharon Osborne recently overheard Quentin Tarantino and Harvey Weinstein “scrapping plans” to make the western “The Hateful Eight” at the Polo. Penelope Cruz power breakfasts there while Salma Hayek favors lunch on its patio. Debbie Reynolds has been going to the Polo since 1958, when, according to Hollywood lore, she first hailed the bartender in the wake of the 30th Academy Awards, as her husband, Eddie Fisher, began his torrid, and eventually doomed, romance with Elizabeth Taylor.
New spots come and go in LA. Director Roland Emmerich recently partnered with Frederic and Nicolas Meschin, the owners of Provençal restaurant The Little Door (which is favored by Euro cinéastes like Oscar contender Julie Delpy) to update Dar Maghreb — the Moroccan cocktail lounge where Farrah Fawcett celebrated her 32nd birthday — into Acabar. Rao’s has opened in Hollywood, and an Ace Hotel is now downtown. But, during Oscar Week, old school joints rule. Like Dan Tana’s — the 60s steak joint where the “Philomena” team will likely celebrate their nominations because Gabrielle Tana, (its producer) is the proprietor’s daughter. And there’s Wolfgang Puck’s legendary Spago where favorites like ahi tuna cones and smoked salmon pizza date back to its 80s heyday when Irving ‘Swifty’ Lazar hosted his legendary Oscar party there. These goodies remain on the menu, which the Austrian chef annually writes for the elite Governors Ball banquet following the Academy Awards.
The day after the ceremony, the place to be is the Château Marmont. Until then, the Gothic-inspired Sunset Boulevard hotel, which has maintained its reputation as a Hollywood hideaway since opening in 1927, is off limits, because entertainment corporations host their hot-invite Oscar parties on its bougainvillea-shrouded garden terrace. A week later, the Dolby resumes its open-door policy, operating tours of its vast auditorium, which became the official home of the Oscars after it hosted the 73rd ceremony in March 2002. Architecture critics have dismissed this colossus as a monstrosity and, indeed, a curious array of sources inspired its “mish-mash” style — including Art Deco, Busby Berkeley’s flashy musical numbers and Rome’s Piazza del Campidoglio. Yet, clutching the polished cherry wood balustrade that embellishes the Dolby’s spiral staircase — following in the footsteps of Amy, Cate, Gywneth, Nicole, Meryl, Leo and Jared — is alone worth the $17 admission price.