BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — There’s an old saying that the Beverly Hills Hotel is where you go to be seen, and the Hotel Bel-Air — its sister establishment — is where you go to hide out.
For the first time in more than 100 years, that’s no longer true — because there is almost no one to see, or to see you, at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Ten days have passed since Jay Leno, Ellen DeGeneres, Sharon Osbourne, Kim Kardashian and other great geopolitical thinkers engaged in a boycott here. Their stance: The hotel is owned by the Sultan of Brunei, who has just instituted Sharia law in his small Southeast Asian nation; until the sultan sells the hotel, or reverses his recent decision, no one should book a room or a banquet hall or a power lunch.
“We’re just making people aware,” Leno told CNN. “It’s not a political issue. This is not something that’s debatable.”
Actually, it is.
Last Tuesday, we decided to see just what was happening — or not — at this storied establishment, one where the smallest rooms are more than $500 a night, where Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Cruise regularly mingle, where guests dress up to pass through the marble lobby down to the outdoor pool.
That afternoon, I made a last-minute reservation (Superior Guestroom, king bed, marble bathroom, southern views, $540/night) for check-in the next day. For a place where you normally can’t even get a lunch reservation, this was no problem.
When I arrived at 12:30 p.m., I was greeted by a row of five staffers at the check-in desk, all of whom had nothing to do. An eager clerk named Tyler pounced.
I was the only guest at the desk, and when I asked if an upgrade might be available, Tyler said sure, no problem, and gave me a top-floor room with an expansive balcony. It would take a little while for the room to be ready, Tyler said, so would I like to have lunch in the Polo Room?
I would.
He escorted me down the hall and around the corner, and in this surprisingly clubby, cozy room, its walls freshly painted in the hotel’s famous deep-forest green, I certainly had my choice of seats.
Outside on the pink patio? No thanks; it was 100 degrees. The room was sparsely inhabited, its banquettes and tables nearly empty, save for a touristy family of five who let their toddler daughter wander around the room with her eyes glued to an iPhone.
I took a seat near the window and was addressed by name by every under-occupied member of the solicitous waitstaff, who often called to mind Oscar Pistorius with their constant use of the title “m’lady.”
I ordered a soup and a salad, and the bill came to nearly $100.
By the time I paid, the room was ready. I took a long walk down an abandoned first-floor hallway to the elevator. It was like being in a five-star version of “The Shining”; I passed no one.
Another long walk down the fourth-floor hallway, which was spotless and empty and eerily quiet. It was scented with lavender.
They still use old-fashioned keys here and after I turned the lock, I was hit by a comfortable burst of an air conditioner and a roaring gas fireplace, up at full blast. The sultan knows how to burn money.
The sense of idle luxury was everywhere: at the pool; at the spa; on the empty outdoor smoking deck; at the barren gift shop selling four Beverly Hills Hotel coasters for $92; in the cavernous lobby, its banquet doors closed.
“Business really began dropping off six weeks ago,” one employee told me. “We knew it was coming. But then it exploded with the celebrity boycott.”
Much of the 650-person staff has been told to stay home, he said. There is now a hiring freeze, and workers who were on the verge of promotions have been stalled. The cancellation of high-profile events — such as the Children’s Defense Fund gala hosted by J.J. Abrams, the Hollywood Reporter’s Women in Entertainment breakfast, and the Motion Picture and Television Fund’s Night Before the Oscars party, among others — has already cost the establishment nearly $2 million.
“The hotel is going to pay $95,000 in total to the people who would have worked at those events,” the employee told me. “Others have essentially been laid off.”
Christopher Cowdray, CEO of the Dorchester Group — which holds 10 luxury hotels around the globe, and is owned by the sultan’s Brunei Investment Agency — has called for a more nuanced understanding.The Hotel Bel-Air is our sister, and there’s no boycott there. There are plenty of hotels owned by the Saudis, and they have Sharia law, and there’s no boycott either.
- Beverly Hills Hotel employee
“Many of our employees may lose the more than $8 million in gratuities they receive annually working at meetings and functions normally held at the hotel,” he told CNBC.
“Many iconic brands across a wide variety of industries — hotels, real estate, consumer products, luxury goods, technology and others — are backed by countries governed by Sharia and not aligned with our civil liberties . . . Against this backdrop, we question why the Beverly Hills Hotel is being singled out.”
The Beverly Hills Hotel is older than Beverly Hills itself, and in many ways, it helped build this small, 6-square-mile city, now renowned as the epitome of American wealth, glamour and decadence. In June 2012, it was named the first historic Beverly Hills landmark. “Los Angeles,” Fran Lebowitz once said, “is a large, city-like area surrounding the Beverly Hills Hotel.”
The hotel was built in 1911 by Margaret J. Anderson, a wealthy widow with two children. At the time, the area was sparsely inhabited; Anderson was hired by a developer named Burton Green, who was hoping to build not just a hotel but a magnet for sophisticated East Coasters, who might be seduced into relocating.
When it opened in 1912, Anderson described its location as “halfway between Los Angeles and the sea.” By 1914, Hollywood Inc. and the movie star had been invented; when Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford — the Brangelina of their day — moved to Beverly Hills, drawn by the hotel, their famous friends followed.
The Beverly Hills Hotel quickly became the celebrity clubhouse of choice, a place where the most scandalous affairs would be kept quiet, the most eccentric behaviors indulged. There was no place like it in America.
Howard Hughes rented four bungalows over 30 years and would call room service at 3 a.m., requesting roast beef sandwiches — to be deposited on the tree trunks outside, so he’d never have to make contact with another human being.
Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, Marilyn Monroe and Yves Montand, John F. Kennedy and Gene Tierney — all had discreet affairs here. Marlene Dietrich was often seen at the bar, fur coat casually slung over the back of her stool. Will Rogers used to come by after playing polo, and his ritual was memorialized in 1941, when the bar was christened The Polo Lounge.
When Sidney Poiter became the first African-American to win the Best Actor Oscar in 1964 for “Lilies of the Field,” he celebrated here, dancing barefoot in the lobby. Raquel Welch was discovered at the pool. The Beatles sneaked in the back door after their famous concert at the Hollywood Bowl, and spent the night after-hours in the pool.
Elizabeth Taylor’s father had an art gallery on the lower level, and she honeymooned here six times. When she was married to Richard Burton, the staff carried out a regular delivery: four bottles of vodka a day, two for breakfast, two for lunch. In the ’70s, in the throes of depression and morbidly obese, she came here — and when guests dared to snicker about her weight and her looks, she was protected.
“She was very heavy, and bothered because she was so heavy,” former pool manager Svend Peterson told the LA Times. “Women were walking by, whispering about how she let herself go. I couldn’t take it anymore. I said, ‘Ms. Taylor, why don’t you come with me? There’s a cabana where you can relax by yourself and feel comfortable.’ ”
By the 1970s, the hotel had become part of pop culture, toggling both old-school Hollywood glamour and modern gluttony. The cover of the Eagles’ 1976 album “Hotel California” was a sunset shot of the hotel, and the title track’s lyrics include the lines, “Mirrors on the ceiling/The pink champagne on ice/And she said, ‘We are all just prisoners here/of our own device.’ ”
Among the movies shot at the Polo Lounge: “The Way We Were,” “Shampoo,” “American Gigolo,” “Hannah and Her Sisters,” “Beverly Hills Cop II.” It became known as Hollywood’s commissary, a place to make high-profile deals and low-profile mistakes.
“Every memory I have of the place that I want to share,” producer Robert Evans told the LA Times, “I wouldn’t want to see in print.”
Today, as all these stars abandon the hotel that has served them so well, the staff has clearly been instructed to keep quiet about any hurt and outrage, any sense of betrayal that their very livelihoods are in jeopardy. But you can sense it vibrating off them, and they make their feelings known as best they can.
“Thank you so much for being here,” I was told more than once. “No, really, thank you. It means a lot, and we won’t forget it.”
What’s gone unnoticed in most coverage is the shadow protest underneath this one: The Beverly Hills Hotel and its sister, the Hotel Bel-Air, are among the few non-union ones left in LA. This does not sit well with UNITE HERE Local 11, the city’s hospitality union, which has been battling to unionize the Beverly Hills Hotel since the ’90s.
Last year, the organization tried to gain traction by aligning the hotel with Brunei’s appalling record on LGBT rights. They got no press.
“Stories need a hook,” Local 11 spokeswoman Leigh Shelton told BuzzFeed. “I just don’t think it had a hook at the time.”
Sharia law, however . . . that was a hook. And suddenly along came Leno, that great car collector, to denounce an oil-rich sultanate, wealth due in large part to extraction by Shell Oil.
The Sultan of Brunei is worth so much money that The Beverly Hills Hotel could sit empty for years and he wouldn’t notice. It’s the working men and women of the hotel, the bartenders, chambermaids, waiters and waitresses, who are suffering.
The Beverly Hills City Council passed a resolution last week urging “the government of Brunei to divest itself of the Beverly Hills Hotel and any other properties it may own in Beverly Hills.”
Talent agency ICM publicly announced the issuing of an internal memo, telling employees they would no longer reimburse any expenses incurred here.
“The Hotel Bel-Air is our sister, and there’s no boycott there,” an employee told me. “There are plenty of hotels owned by the Saudis, and they have Sharia law, and there’s no boycott either.”
It’s true: In 2012, for example, Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal purchased the Fairmont Sonoma Spa and Inn for $88 million. He’s also a part owner of the Four Seasons Restaurant and Hotels management company, Raffles Hotel and Resorts, and New York City’s Plaza Hotel.
Currently, over at Cannes, Hilary Swank is starring in a film financed in part by the Sultan of Brunei’s son. Films such as “Mission Impossible 4” and “Fast and Furious 7” have filmed in Dubai, where gays can be sentenced to up to 10 years in jail. Mariah Carey performed for one of the Sultan’s sons last New Year’s Eve. Jennifer Lopez performed in Dubai in March, and Justin Timberlake is booked in Abu Dhabi in May.
Clearly, there has been no similar outcry.
“I won’t be visiting the Hotel Bel-Air or the Beverly Hills Hotel until this is resolved,” tweeted DeGeneres.
“I implore all of you to stay away,” Osbourne wrote on Facebook. “Otherwise, all we are doing is feeding a madman’s empire.”
The hotel’s employees could not disagree more. The Sultan of Brunei is worth so much money — $20 billion, according to Forbes — that the Beverly Hills Hotel could sit empty for years and he wouldn’t notice.
It’s the working men and women of the hotel, the bartenders, chambermaids, waiters and waitresses, who are suffering — and with unemployment in California at 8 percent, their anxiety is only mounting.
“This place may be non-union, but everyone here is very happy,” a staffer told me. “The health insurance is excellent. The hotel is paying comp wages out of its own budget. This is the hotel everyone wants to work at — you feel its energy. It’s special.”