David Hartnell’s Holiday – 3rd January 2011

Monday 3rd January 2011

I'm not one to gossip but……Firstly I’d like to wish you all a Very Happy New Year and thank you for reading my column each week. This week I want to tell you about some ghost stories from one of my all time favourite hotels in Los Angeles.

The 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, opened the Roosevelt Hotel, Hollywood at 7000 Hollywood Blvd on 15 May 1927. It was built at a cost of $2.5 million, which was a tremendous price in those days. It quickly became the ‘in’ place, and the centre of the glamorous social whirl for all of Hollywood’s biggest stars. The first Academy Awards presentation was held in the Blossom Ballroom on 16 May 1929. Then the awards were called Merit Awards, and were given not for one performance, but for work covering a two-year period. Douglas Fairbanks was host for the evening, presenting awards to Janet Gaynor as Best Actress, Emil Jannings as Best Actor, and to Wings, starring Buddy Rogers, as Best Picture. Marilyn Monroe posed for her first advert, for suntan lotion, on the diving board at the pool. She stayed at the hotel often over the years, preferring a second-floor Cabana Room overlooking the pool. Over the years, my favourite hotel of all time has gathered hundreds of stories of ghosts, spirits and other things that go bump in the night. Here are just a few of them; true or not, these stories are all part of yesteryear Hollywood. In mid December 1985, two weeks prior to the big re-opening of the Roosevelt Hotel, Hollywood, the first ghost spirits were discovered. As the big day came closer, all the staff from management pitched in to help. Alan Russell, who was assistant to the general manager, offered to sweep the Blossom Ballroom before the carpeting was put down. He swept the entire ballroom, noticing one area that seemed a lot cooler than the rest of the room, but he never really gave it much thought. Later, as he swept the width of the room, the cool spot was still there. At that point, he called Kelly Green and together they tried to figure it out. They looked for open doors but there were none open the air conditioners had not been hooked up at that point and there was no trap door in the floor, so there appeared to be no reason for the cool spot. They measured the cool spot to be about 30 inches in diameter and about 10 degrees cooler than the rest of the room.

Since 1985, two different respected psychics have said that it is the spirit of a man, wearing black and that there is a lot of anxiety there. Could it have been the spirit of a man attending the first Academy Awards dinner? Nobody knows. On the same day, staff member Suzanne Leonard was dusting the general manager’s office. As she was dusting the tall dark-framed mirror, she saw the reflection of a blonde girl. When she turned around to speak to the girl, there was no-one there, yet when she looked back at the mirror, the reflection was still there. Suzanne was puzzled, so she asked the manager about the mirror. He told her that the mirror had belonged to Marilyn Monroe and had been removed from the suite that Marilyn had often occupied out by the swimming pool. The mirror stood outside the hotel lift on the lower-level landing for many years. Up on the ninth floor, maids were making up the beds while other hotel employees stocked the rooms with towels. A waitress was helping out by setting out the towels, and she went into room 928; she felt a cool breeze against her arms but didn’t pay much attention to it. Workmen were still in the hall and doors were open, so she thought it was just a draft. As she went into the room the door slammed shut however; these doors have compression hinges, which means they can’t slam. That startled her, but she continued placing the towels. As she came out of the room, she again felt a very definite coldness; it was like someone in a rush brushing past her in the hall. Later that day, two housemaids who also worked on the ninth floor said, ‘There was something strange there’, and that they would not work anywhere near the room again. Later it was learned that Room 928 was where Montgomery Clift had lived for three months. While filming the movie From Here to Eternity, he used to pace up and down the hall, rehearsing his lines and sometimes blowing a bugle. The hotel opened, welcoming its first guests on 30 December 1985, but during the next few months a number of ghostly things happened. For the first couple of months, only the public areas of the hotel and floors three, four and five were completed and in full use. One night before the third floor was completed, and exactly at midnight, there was a call on the hotel’s PBX from Room 1032. PBX responded, but there was nobody on the other end. The room, like the entire floor, was unfinished and unoccupied; there was also no phone in that room at the time of the call to the PBX. By May of the following year, work on the upper floors was being completed. Daniel Cichon, Assistant Director of Housekeeping, was inspecting the rooms prior to the opening of the 11th floor. After completing his full inspection in Star Suite 1101/1102, he turned off the lights, locked the door and went back to his office. Minutes later, he returned to the suite with an extra wastebasket, only to find all the lights on. He was the only one with a key to the Star Suite, yet ‘someone’ had turned on all the lights. In mid October 1989, a TV film crew wanted to do a story on the hotel’s ghosts for a Halloween special. During shooting, outside Room 928, the house lights went out, their sound equipment broke down and the film jammed in the camera … it took almost four hours to do a one hour shoot. When they tried to shoot Marilyn’s mirror, the smoke alarm went off and they
couldn’t complete the shoot. The cold spot in the ballroom affected the audio equipment—I guess they really stirred up the ghosts that night!

On 15 December 1990, the LA County District Attorney’s Office held a holiday dinner dance at the hotel. After the party, one of the invited
couples was looking at the pictures on the mezzanine. As they neared the doors that lead to the balcony, overlooking the Blossom Room, they heard beautiful piano music drifting out. They walked into the room and saw a man in a white suit. As they approached, they spoke to him but he didn’t answer. As they got even closer, he totally disappeared! The couple told the night manager that the man didn’t walk away; he simply vanished.

The manager went upstairs with the couple, but there was no man in a white suit; in fact, the room was empty. The following Monday morning, Billy from Engineering was working on the third floor. He was walking south in the north/south hallway. As he came to the corner he looked to
his left (east), and halfway down the hall he saw a man standing in the hallway. He called out, asking the man if he could help him. The man didn’t answer, but continued to look from side to side as if he wasn’t sure which way he should go. Bill came closer, within 3 feet of the man, and again asked if he could be of help. The man still did not reply, but turned and walked towards the fire exit at the east end of the hall. Then he walked ‘through’ the door. He didn’t open it and go out—he walked ‘through’ the door! Billy tried to follow, but he found that his feet were rooted to the spot. He could not move for what seemed like five minutes, though he said it was probably only a few. When asked for details about the man, Billy said, ‘He was wearing old shoes and a white suit’. Could it have been the same man in the white suit that the others saw two days earlier? The American TV show Entertainment Tonight came to do a piece about Montgomery Clift’s room and even bought a psychic with them. The room had been vacant for three days, but when they went in, the heat was on full blast. The windows were wide open as the crew started setting up their equipment. The interviewer was very, very sceptical about a ‘ghost’ in the room. When the filming lamp suddenly blew, he laughed and said, ‘Those things happen all the time’. Immediately the film crew corrected him, saying that those lights last forever, but he wouldn’t admit that anything strange was going on. As he began the interview, he asked the psychic if she felt any ghosts in the room. She said, ‘No, not really. Perhaps if I were alone I might, but with all these people (10 in all) all the lights, and your negative attitude … no I don’t!’ At that moment the interviewer started to laugh, when suddenly a window slammed shut! There was no wind that night and no-one was near the window. It couldn’t have closed by itself because it opens from side to side and not up and down; someone would have needed to push it.

The interviewer was rather shaken at this point. When the crew finished in the room, they went next door to talk to the guests in that room. They didn’t identify themselves as a TV crew, asking only if the girls had heard any noises in Room 928. They replied, ‘Oh yeah, there were some bumping noises, but we didn’t think anything about it. We were going out, and really forgot about it’. The room had not been occupied for three days. Room 1217, which is now Room 1221, has long been known to have ‘something unique and magical’ about it, so said Linda Goodman, author of the books Sun Signs and Love Signs. She stayed in Room 1217 for several months, back in 1959, while writing her first book. She said then that the room had ‘a presence, a special quality’ about it. In October 1989, that presence made itself known again, this time by telephone. Late one night, #1221 lit up on the hotel PBX switchboard. The operator responded, but there was no-one on the line. When the light lit up again, the operator checked the guest-list register and found that the room was not occupied. She called Security, explained the situation and asked that they check the room and put the phone back on the hook. They did, and that was that, until three nights later when it happened again. That night, the phone got off the hook by itself—three times in one hour. Each time, Security went up and replaced the phone, and the next time they went up … the phone was off the hook. If you’ve never stayed at, or visited, The Roosevelt Hotel, you’re missing out on a ‘real’ part of Hollywood. Believe me it’s a must for a stay or just a visit—you will not be disappointed. …..but my lips are sealed!

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