You Must Remember This by Robert J. Wagner

extra effort to push himself harder than anybody else. In many ways, running [the] hotel was like running a small country.”
    Hernando also broadened the number of amenities available at the hotel. Francis Taylor, the father of Elizabeth, opened an art gallery in the downstairs shopping area in 1939, and through the war years the Francis Taylor Gallery became an increasingly important venue for art. Francis sold a lot of California Impressionists, such as Granville Redmond (a deaf artist who had a studio at the Chaplin lot on La Brea for a number of years and who also appeared in some of Chaplin’s films). Francis also sold work by Augustus John. His prices were reasonable, so actors who were also discerning collectors, such as Vincent Price, James Mason, and Greta Garbo, purchased a lot of art from him.
    Interestingly, although its “Pink Palace” moniker may seem as old as the hotel itself, the hotel wasn’t actually painted that color until 1948 under the direction of Paul Revere Williams, who also designed the customized cursive script for its logo. Williams was a very dignified, classy man who was born in 1894 and who encountered all the discrimination you might expect would face a young black man in that era. “I determined, when I was still in high school, to become an architect,” said Williams. “When I announced my intention to my instructor, he stared at me with as much astonishment as he would have displayed had I proposed a rocket flight to Mars. ‘Who ever heard of a Negro being an architect?’ he demanded.”
    Williams knew that he was going to have to depend almost entirely on white clients, so his first impression had to be faultless. Paul was light skinned, always impeccably dressed, and had taught himself to draw upside down. As soon as a client sat down with him, Paul would start sketching out the plans upside down, which would quickly disarm anyone who was taken aback by the fact that his architect was black. And then Paul would ask for suggestions, and the customer would become a full partner in the project. Brilliant psychology.
    In 1949 Williams created the new Crescent Wing, which added 109 rooms to the hotel, and turned it from a T plan to an H plan. Also overhauled were the Polo Lounge and the Fountain Coffee Shop, and the lobby took on its timeless pink and green color scheme that’s been maintained ever since.
    The pink and green banana leaf wallpaper, however, was actually the work of Don Loper, who made his name as a dress designer for, among many others, Marilyn Monroe.
    It’s a mark of how brilliant Paul’s design for the Polo Lounge was that his is the only hot spot I can think of that has survived unchanged from 1949 to the present day.
    Paul is an example of the remarkable openness of Los Angeles to the new, the untried in architecture and style. I think this was possible because you had a set of circumstances that weren’t replicated anyplace else in the country: a basically thriving local economy, a large group of talented architects, and—most important—clients who were interested in anything theatrical or new.
    When I started going to the Polo Lounge in the late forties, it wasn’t terribly expensive by Hollywood standards—a daiquiri might cost you seventy-five cents, but a Pimm’s would run more than a dollar and a bottle of Mumm’s Cordon Rouge champagnefrom 1929 would set you back more than twenty dollars. So the tourists stayed away simply by dint of the tabs.
    Paul Williams had completed all his additions to the hotel by the time Stanley Anderson died in 1951. Stanley was one of the pioneers of Southern California, but outside of his participation in the birth of Beverly Hills and the hotel that bears the town’s name, he’s not remembered by many people. But he’s very much remembered by me.
    Hernando Courtright sold the place in 1953 for $5.5 million, and by that time the Beverly Hills Hotel was the premier hotel in the area. He continued managing the