Читать книгу The Suite Life - Christopher Heard - Страница 6

Introduction

I have always associated hotel living with excitement and adventure, with romance and sensuality, with mystery and the sense that within the walls of a hotel everything is possible, anything can happen, and usually does. I link hotels with all the fascinating people I have met because more often than not the encounter was in a hotel. But the idea, the dream of living that life myself, was first inspired when I was 12 years old. Always a voracious reader, I read anything that caught my fancy whether I fully knew the reason for my interest or not. It was at that age that I was reading a book on the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, about how for many of the final years of his life he resided on the penthouse floors of fine hotels in Acapulco, Mexico, and Vancouver, British Columbia. Hughes was said to have lived in complete seclusion, even though he was in a place where thousands of people came and went on a weekly basis. The mysteriousness of that intrigued me, and as a young boy who was painfully shy and woefully introverted, the very notion of being a part of the world, being in the middle of a swirling microcosm of activity, while at the same time being able to shut oneself away from the hustle and bustle at will, intrigued the hell out of me and still, obviously, does.

My deeply rooted love affair with Toronto’s Fairmont Royal York Hotel also began when I was very young. My mother, Marie, would bring my brother, Peter, and me to the Royal York for weekends from our home 35 miles east of the city. We would come in on Friday evenings, see a stage show or a movie or go to a museum, and walk the streets and eat in little restaurants and shop in huge bookstores. Then, on Sunday afternoons, we would return home. What I noticed about those Royal York weekends was that time appeared to elongate. Two full days at the hotel seemed to feel like a month, with each moment being savoured and enjoyed. Later I came to understand that I had an even deeper connection to the Royal York, but more about that later.

My lifelong attraction to movie history and culture, something I made a career out of, was also significantly intensified in the Royal York during one of my many childhood sojourns there. On one such occasion my mother was out with a friend for the evening and my younger brother was fast asleep in the suite. I was clicking around the TV channels and came across the in-room pay-per-view channels. I noticed that the acclaimed movies Taxi Driver and One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest were a mere click away. I was too young to see the films on the big screen due to ratings restrictions, but here they were. I ordered both movies and was mesmerized by their stark realism, the brilliance of their screenplays, and the flawless, indelible performances of actors Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson, their stars. I took in both films twice and came away thinking about movies in a whole new way — that they could thrill and entertain but could also dig deeply into the human condition.

Years later I told that story to Robert De Niro and to One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest producer Saul Zaentz at different times during interviews, both sessions taking place in hotel suites (The Regency in New York City). In preparation for this book I did some rough calculations and determined that I’ve done more than 700 interviews in hotel suites, with a few of the most memorable ones in the Royal York. But the true magic of the Royal York really hit me one sunny afternoon in August.

My beautiful little daughter, Isabelle, was visiting me at the Royal York from her home in Windsor, Ontario, when she was three years old. Isabelle is smart, curious, creative, and energetic. She loves the Royal York and runs in the big, open spaces on the mezzanine level. I follow her around with a video camera so we can make our own little Eloise movies. On that particular Saturday afternoon we were in the lobby, and Isabelle was climbing the stairs leading to the venerable Imperial Room’s large, ornate doors. They were closed, and nothing was happening in the Imperial Room that afternoon.

The Royal York Hotel’s Imperial Room has showcased performances by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong as well as by Tina Turner and my daughter, Isabelle.

(Courtesy Fairmont Hotels & Resorts)

Isabelle asked me, “What’s in there?” I told her we could peek inside and have a look. We did so and saw the chandeliers and huge, draped windows. I heard a little “Wow” come from knee level. We slipped inside to look around. Isabelle was dazzled by the room’s size, her attention drawn to the velvet curtains on the stage. I told her that singers and musicians once played on that stage and that all the empty tables we saw had been filled with people watching. She asked me if I could lift her onto the stage, and when she was up there, I sat at one of the circular tables directly in front. Isabelle danced and twirled and sang on the enormous stage.

As she performed, I envisioned the stars who had graced that stage over the past several decades — everyone from Peggy Lee and Tony Bennett to Marlene Dietrich and Ella Fitzgerald. I was sitting at a table where many a dandy had sat with his date taking in a show over drinks. Glancing around the room, I marvelled at how much history, how many stories, were contained in this place. Up on that stage, with the lingering spirit of Dietrich perhaps in attendance, my beautiful little girl was making her stage debut all by herself to the proudest and most enthusiastically supportive audience imaginable — her daddy.

Isabelle bounced across the stage, singing one of our favourite songs from the movie version of The Cat in the Hat — “He’s a cat in a hat, he’s a chat in a chapeau, he’s a gato in a sombrero …” The more she twirled the more energy she seemed to have. It was as if Peggy Lee were silently telling her to “Sing, Isabelle, sing.” When she finally wore herself out and collapsed onto the stage laughing with red cheeks and an exaggerated show of being out of breath, she called to me that it was “Spaghetti time!” That meant lunch at the nearby Old Spaghetti Factory.

Outside, as we strolled along Front Street toward The Esplanade, Isabelle peered back at the Royal York. (The farther away you get the more immense and regal the old hotel looks). She smiled and asked me if the building was a “magical castle.” I bent down to take in the view she was seeing and said, “Yes, Isabelle, it is.”