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Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel

OPEN: 1921–1989

LOCATION: 3400 Wilshire Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90010

ORIGINAL PHONE: DRexel 7000

CUISINE: California-French Fusion

DESIGN: Myron Hunt (original design); Paul Revere Williams (extensive interior/exterior renovations)

BUILDING STYLE: Spanish Revival and Art Deco

CURRENTLY: Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools

The sprawling grounds of the Ambassador Hotel, home of the Cocoanut Grove nightclub, 1943.

THE AMBASSADOR HOTEL WAS ONE OF THE MOST HISTORIC HOTELS ON THE WEST COAST. It was infamous for its celebrity clientele and as the location of Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination. With its grand pools and palm-lined property, the twenty-four-acre Ambassador complex was the epitome of the California lifestyle.

The hotel was part of the Ambassador Hotels System, which at one time consisted of sixty-seven properties from coast to coast (the chain was dissolved in the 1930s). A city in itself, the hotel had a whopping 1,200 rooms and bungalows, plus golf courses, tennis courts, and Olympic-size pools. The arcade contained thirty-seven specialty shops, including dress shops, a post office, a hat shop, jewelry shops, a men’s cigar shop, an art gallery, and a British and European import shop called the Continental.

Many guests stayed at the property year-round. It was not uncommon for a celebrity to live at the Ambassador while filming or working. Howard Hughes and Charlie Chaplin lived there for a while. In 1927, F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, moved into one of the bungalows on the property and reportedly trashed it. Rumor has it that they started fires in the bungalow and also burned their bill. Preparing for the 1928 Summer Olympics, Egyptian swimmer Farid Simaika used the Ambassador Swimming Club for his practices. In 1933, Amelia Earhart checked into the hotel for a short stay. In 1945, Emmeline Snively of the Blue Book Modeling Agency, which had offices on the premises, signed Norma Jeane Baker, who later changed her name to Marilyn Monroe. Baker paid $100 for makeup, beauty, fashion, and charm lessons from the agency, all deducted from her first salary.

The Ambassador also hosted many heads of state from every corner of the globe, as well as seven American presidents. In 1952, vice presidential nominee Richard Nixon wrote his famous “Checkers” speech in one of the suites. It was later broadcast live from the former El Capitan Theatre (now the Avalon Theatre) in Hollywood, with only Nixon and his wife, Patricia, who was off-camera, sitting on the stage.

During the 1920s, countless celebrities frequented the Ambassador’s Cocoanut Grove nightclub, including Louis B. Mayer, Douglas Fairbanks, Howard Hughes, Norma Talmadge, Clara Bow, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino, and Joan Crawford. When the hotel first opened its doors, the owners realized that its Zinnia Grill nightclub was not large enough for both their guests and the locals. Only a few months later, they converted the grand ballroom into the lavish, 1,000-seat Cocoanut Grove. Upon their arrival, guests were led down a majestic staircase into a large ballroom decorated with mechanical monkeys swinging from full-size palm trees, purchased after their use in Rudolph Valentino’s 1921 movie The Sheik. The nightclub’s ceiling was scattered with “stars,” and a waterfall flowed in the back of the room. The Grove hosted many famous performers, including Richard Pryor, Barbra Streisand, Judy Garland, Lena Horne, Bing Crosby, Merv Griffin, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, the Supremes, Benny Goodman, Liza Minnelli, Vikki Carr, Sonny and Cher, and Liberace.

The Grove was also a French dinner club where Chef Henri used West Coast staples like citrus fruits and other fresh produce to create a California-French fusion cuisine. Despite the mass quantities of food that came out of the kitchen, the dishes were known for being very inventive and flavorful. For those wanting something lighter, the hotel also offered the Palm Bar & Coffee Shop, which architect Paul Revere Williams designed with the help of interior designer Don Loper. You can see the final iteration of the Palm in the 1996 film That Thing You Do.

Constance Bennett and Marquis Henry de La Falaise at a party for Marion Davies at the Ambassador, 1931.

In 1930, the Ambassador hosted the second Academy Awards; the hotel would host the event seven more times in the thirteen years that followed. During World War II, the hotel was used for countless fundraisers in the war effort, and the Cocoanut Grove became a hot spot for men and women on leave from the military.

On August 23, 1964, the Ambassador canceled a reservation for the Beatles because the hotel was packed with fans and security could not be guaranteed. Luckily, British actor Reginald Owen rented his Bel-Air mansion at 356 Saint Pierre Road to the Beatles for $1,000. That evening, the Beatles performed a sold-out concert at the Hollywood Bowl.

It wasn’t all glitz and glamour at the Ambassador, however. It was also the site of a horrific crime that convulsed the nation. On June 5, 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy stepped off the podium in the Ambassador’s Embassy Room ballroom after a brief victory speech. He had just won the California Democratic presidential primary election. Passing through the pantry area of the hotel’s main kitchen on his way to the press area, Kennedy was shot three times, along with five other people, with a .22 caliber Ivan-Johnson Cadet revolver. Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan was arrested at the scene and later convicted of the murder. Kennedy died from his injuries twenty-six hours later at the Good Samaritan Hospital. The other victims survived. Ever since that incident, the U.S. Secret Service has provided protection for presidential candidates. The hotel’s former location on Wilshire Boulevard was renamed “Robert F. Kennedy Parkway.”

Inside the Cocoanut Grove, 1939.

Harold Lloyd and Mildred Davis on the Ambassador’s front lawn, 1923.

In another instance of macabre notoriety, the jury members in the Charles Manson trial were sequestered at the Ambassador. The jury’s seven men and five women spent a costly 225 days at the hotel during the 1971 trial.

A very special employee at the hotel was Arthur Nyhaden Jr., the doorman who manned the Ambassador’s front doors from 1949 to 1989. He was the first person guests came in contact with upon their arrival at the Ambassador, and he could recall the details, preferences, and confidences of thousands of the hotel’s long-standing guests from memory. Art wore a black tie adorned with keepsake pins from every point on the globe that guests had brought back to him from their travels. Over the forty years that he worked for the hotel, Art only missed three days of work.

The demise of the Ambassador and the surrounding neighborhood began in the 1970s, when gang and drug problems grew severe. The Cocoanut Grove was renovated in the mid-1970s, but it didn’t help. The hotel checked out its last guest in 1989.

Charles MacArthur, Norma Shearer, Jimmy Stewart, and Helen Hayes MacArthur, 1938.

On location at the Ambassador for the film Foolish Wives, 1921.

The Ambassador was said to be the most-used filming location that wasn’t at a major studio. More than 120 motion pictures, music videos, and television shows were filmed there. In the 1967 film The Graduate, the Ambassador stood in for the Taft Hotel, where Mrs. Robinson and Ben Braddock had their affair. In 1990, the hotel established a private company, Ambassador Films, to lease the hotel for film production. In 1992’s Sister Act, Whoopi Goldberg fled the Mob through the same kitchen where Robert Kennedy had been shot. Two hotel rooms were used as Gary Sinise and Kevin Bacon’s “apartments” in Apollo 13. Fittingly, Bobby was the last film shot there, in 2006, while other sections of the hotel were being demolished.

Postcard featuring the Cocoanut Grove, circa 1962.

Thelma Todd and Pat DiCicco at the Ambassador before Todd’s mysterious death a short time later, 1935.

During this time, private groups and event promoters were allowed to rent out the ballrooms or even the Cocoanut Grove for dances, parties, and other events. In 1992, I was fortunate enough to attend a Halloween party at the Grove. As I wandered the halls of the shopping arcade and the lobby area, I hoped the Ambassador would return to its former glory.

In 2004 and 2005, the hotel was restricted from filming because of a legal struggle between the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and Sirhan Sirhan, who wanted to conduct more testing in the pantry where Robert F. Kennedy had been shot. When the hotel was razed beginning in 2005, the pantry was dismantled and placed in storage, where it remains today.

Henry Fonda making a promotional appearance for The Best Man at the Ambassador, 1962.

In 1998, after almost ten years of proposing to build the world’s tallest building on the site of the Ambassador, Donald Trump blamed the LAUSD for ruining his investment and pulled out of the purchasing talks. The LAUSD had put up a $50 million dollar deposit for the site. Part of the deal of sale to the LAUSD was that many of the elements of historical value in the building would be preserved and used in the new school. These terms were agreed upon, but when demolition started they found that the areas they had planned on saving were not structurally sound.

I personally watched the demolition from across the street a few times in the first part of 2006. The agreement was for the Cocoanut Grove to be saved for the school auditorium, and the Palm Bar & Coffee Shop would be turned into a teachers’ lounge and café. Based on what was possible, the original terms of preservation were altered to reflect that they would incorporate “working original elements” into the design of the new campus.

Today, the campus is called the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools. Six schools sit on the property. The north side of the campus resembles the original hotel façade. The front lawn is now the school’s sports field, and there is also a small park with quotes from Kennedy adorning its front gates on Wilshire.

William Demarest, Jerry Lewis, and William Bendix at a wrap party for The Errand Boy, 1959.

Guest of honor Claudette Colbert, 1934.

Guests at a 1933 party, including: Josef von Sternberg (top row, center); Leo Carillo, Marlene Dietrich, Jean Harlow, and Joan Blondell (middle row, center); John Boles (front row, far left); and Dolores del Rio, Edward G. Robinson, and Heather Angel (front row, second, third, and fourth from right).