You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood's Golden Age
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The famous booths at the Brown Derby.
Photofest
On Valentine’s Day in 1929, the restaurant added a second location, on Vine Street, which became even more popular because it was close to Columbia and Paramount. The Vine Street Derby sat two hundred, and its waitstaff was all male, in pressed uniforms. The booths had low backs, so everybody could see everybody else, which made working the room easier.
For years the Vine Street Derby was open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and the elite customers—William Powell, Joan Crawford, Kate Hepburn—sat in booths on the north side of the building, underneath caricatures of them that were originally done by an artist named Eddie Vitch. That delightful custom began in 1933, when Vitch stopped in and offered to draw caricatures in exchange for food. The manager pointed to a couple of celebrities that happened to be dining, and Vitch quickly captured their essence in a few broad strokes.
After Vitch returned to Europe, the job of drawing the caricatures was taken over by a man known only as Zel. Supposedly, nobody knew his full name. Zel would complete his drawing, the subject would autograph it, and it would be hung on the wall. The caricatures became a barometer of status. Agents would try to have their clients’ pictures hung next to legends like Gable and Cooper; occasionally the drawings had to be rearranged because marriages broke up.
The value of those pieces would be staggering today.
I’d say the restaurant got the best of that particular exchange.
The Derby eventually became a central part of Hollywood life. Wallace Beery ate there all the time, usually ordering the corned beef hash, with sponge cake drenched in ketchup (!) for dessert. Joe E. Brown liked the hash, too. Tom Mix always ordered the bouillabaisse.
The Vine Street Derby was also designed by Carl Weyl, who went on to be a success in the movies, too, winning Oscars for art directing The Adventures of Robin Hood and Casablanca. In fact, in the latter Weyl gave Bogart an office above Rick’s Café that looked a lot like Bob Cobb’s office in the Brown Derby.
Bob Cobb was a presence at the restaurant for what seemed like forever, from the late 1920s to his death in 1970. Cobb was a Montana man who wore cowboy boots when he was in the mood, but the rest of the time was impeccably outfitted. (Bob never lost his affinity for cowboys; one of his closest friends was Tom Mix, and Bob always said that he was the last person to hear from Mix before his fatal car accident in 1940. “Coming home,” cabled Mix. “Meet you at the Derby.”)
That said, informality extended only so far with Bob. Although the Derby was basically a steakhouse, proprieties were observed—not only were the waiters well turned out, but the patrons wore ties. (There were exceptions; I’ve seen a photo of Charlie Chaplin eating at the Derby without a tie, but then he was Charlie Chaplin. I never saw anybody without a tie in the restaurant itself, at least not while Bob was alive.)
In the beginning Bob was just the manager, but when Somborn died in 1934, just a few months after Wilson Mizner passed away, Bob took over the operation and made it an even greater success. He spent his life at the Derby, and he welcomed people of a similar commitment. The maître d’ was Bill Chilias, who reigned at the Hollywood Derby from 1929 to 1955, and a jack of all trades was Benny Massi, who was there on opening day and stayed for the next forty-six years.
A maître d’ at a major Hollywood restaurant has to have the diplomatic skills of a secretary of state; Bill always made sure that everybody had reservations, and he also made sure that the best booths were held for the best customers. Being a maître d’ at a major Hollywood restaurant is also a lucrative business; Bill would make thousands of dollars in tips at Christmastime alone.
In the beginning the Derby served food that could have come out of a lunch wagon: hot dogs, grilled cheese sandwiches, hamburgers, chili. When Bob Cobb took it over, it got better fast, although its menu was never elaborate. The beef came from the East, the lobsters from Maine, the bacon from Canada; the cream in the coffee was heavy, and the Catalina sand dabs you ate at night had usually been harvested that morning. The prices were not cheap for the period, but there were lots of places that were much more expensive. The Derby charged thirty cents for an average cocktail, and a house specialty, such as the Bamboo, would run forty cents.
But Bob’s greatest invention went far beyond the confines of the Brown Derby. The Cobb salad came about because Bob was hungry, but not for any of the overly familiar—to him, anyway—items on the menu.
Late one night, he threw together a chopped salad of chicken and a variety of other leftover ingredients. Some friends dropped in as Bob was eating and asked what the delicious-looking dish was. They tried it, they liked it . . . and millions of others have tried and liked the Cobb salad since. Yet I’ve tasted versions that would have greatly surprised Bob, who placed the emphasis on avocados, Roquefort cheese, and his own homemade French dressing.
During the Depression, Bob had to be economical; he even figured out a use for his day-old bread, by devising pumpernickel cheese toast. Bob made his own delicious coleslaw, which was served inside the sandwiches, not on the side. Also excellent was his homemade Thousand Island dressing, which had a kick to it—Bob mixed in chili sauce and bell peppers, as well as capers.
Besides his restaurants, Bob loved baseball. In 1938, when a Triple-A franchise in the Pacific Coast League became available, Bob invested in what would become the Hollywood Stars, who were popular for years; he was joined in the venture by Bing Crosby, Cecil B. DeMille, Walt Disney, Gary Cooper, George Burns, Robert Taylor, and Barbara Stanwyck. Years later, Bob helped bring the Dodgers to Los Angeles. Sorry, Brooklyn.
The huge success of the first two Derbies spawned two more: one that opened in 1931 in Beverly Hills on the corner of Wilshire and Rodeo, and another that opened in 1941 in Los Feliz. The latter had a large carhop area that enabled people to dine in their autos.
Bob was now a restaurant mogul, and he enjoyed it to the hilt. He took especially good care of George Raft, who was there all the time, especially after his career cratered in the 1950s and he got into terrible tax trouble. George was on his ass, but Bob always reserved a booth with a phone for him, so George could have his meals while waiting for nonexistent job offers.
One day at the Brown Derby George told me he was working on a memoir. I told him that I had his title, and that he didn’t have to give me anything for it. “Call it ‘Heads or Tails,’” I said, referring to the great coin flipping bit he had done in Scarface, which started his career. George nodded and thanked me. When the book came out, it was called The George Raft Story. I still think my title was better.
The wives of the restaurateurs were often on hand in all the prime Hollywood eateries, because a restaurant takes more than one person to run it. Most of the wives were primary contributors to their respective husbands’ successes, and thus it became their success as well. Bob Cobb’s wife Sally was a very pleasant woman. Besides the Brown Derby empire, she helped Bob run the glass-bottom boat concession around Catalina for years.
Bob became something of a showman, as a restaurateur has to be. He had an ice sculpture created daily for the Vine Street Derby, for instance; on Fridays, it would be of two boxers. On those Fridays that branch of the restaurant would be packed for early dinner. Friday night was boxing night, and the Vine Street Derby was just a short walk from the Hollywood Legion Stadium, where the fights were held.
Among the regular attendees of those Friday night matches were the Irish mafia: Pat O’Brien, Jimmy Cagney, Spencer Tracy, Frank McHugh, and Ralph Bellamy. Mae West was also a great fan of boxing—or, more likely, of boxers. If you wanted to eat at the Brown Derby on Vine, you were sure to get a table anytime after seven forty-five on Friday night, because the place would clear out as if someone had sounded a fire alarm.
After the fights were over, the place rapidly filled up again. It was like the tide going out, then coming back in.
I was told that Clark Gable proposed to Carole Lombard at the Derby, and I’d like to think it’s true. Certainly, my own connection with the Brown Derby was momentous. Right before Natalie Wood and I were married on December 28, 1957, we had dinner there, then took off for Scottsdale, where we had our ceremony performed so as to get away from our studios’ attempts at stage managing. There’s even a picture of us there that was taken very close to that night. I’m on the phone (sorry!), sitting under artwork of Joan Crawford and Olivia de Havilland. Natalie is looking at me like a woman in love, which, God knows, we were.
Hollywood in the 1970s was no place for class, and so the Vine Street Derby fell on hard times. It managed to continue operating until 1985, when it closed for reconstruction because of earthquake damage. A few years later it finally closed for good, and was demolished in 1994. Today, there’s a splendid reconstruction of the original Brown Derby at Disney World in Florida, complete with reproductions of the original sketches by Vitch.
Somehow, I think Bob and Sally Cobb would be pleased.
The main growth area for the second generation of Hollywood restaurants was Sunset Boulevard. Supposedly the first nightclub on what became the Strip was a place called Maxine’s, at 9103 Sunset, right around the corner from an avocado orchard. (In the ’20s, the far end of Sunset Boulevard was a poinsettia field.)
In the early 1930s a place called La Boheme opened. It looked vaguely French, like a large roadside inn. The food was supposedly good, but it was largely a gambling establishment. In 1934 La Boheme became the Trocadero—one of the landmarks of Hollywood nightlife.
The Trocadero was the brainchild of Billy Wilkerson, the founder and publisher of the Hollywood Reporter and one of the town’s great rogues. Billy had founded the Hollywood Reporter in 1930, and quickly became one of Hollywood’s most outspoken figures. Whether scolding or boosting, he was always vehement. He blackmailed studios into supporting the paper with ads. If they didn’t advertise in the proportions he considered proper, he simply blackballed them from coverage, from press releases to film reviews.
The studios didn’t take this lying down, and would fight back by interfering with the distribution of the paper. There were several times when Billy was on the verge of going under, but he was always rescued by a timely loan from one of his friends, like Joe Schenck or Howard Hughes.
Billy sensed that the Sunset Strip was something special. Its beauty was that it was an unincorporated zone, a no-man’s-land. It didn’t belong to either Hollywood or Beverly Hills, but was perfectly situated in between. In practice, this meant that it was more or less wide open for booze during Prohibition and gambling at any time. It was Billy Wilkerson who made the area between Crescent Heights Boulevard and Doheny Drive the swankiest place on the Strip.
Portrait of Billy Wilkerson.
After Prohibition was repealed, Billy kicked into high gear. He began importing wines and liquor and needed a place for storage. That was when he came across the building on the Strip that had once been La Bohème. He bought it mainly because it had a large cellar, then decided to convert the upstairs into a nightclub. That abandoned place ultimately became the Trocadero.
Billy didn’t have a lot of money, but he did have an endless supply of hustle, so he convinced Harold Grieve, the husband of silent screen star Jetta Goudal and a good designer, to decorate the place in return for deferred payments. Grieve went along with it.
But Billy was still running short, and just before the Trocadero’s opening, he saw Myron Selznick driving by and invited him in. He asked Selznick why he had never thrown a party.
Before they were through talking, Selznick agreed to have the opening night party at the Trocadero, which tided Wilkerson over until the money came rolling in afterward. (There was a persistent rumor that what Selznick got in return for his largesse was persistently kind treatment in the pages of the Hollywood Reporter for all of his clients. I wasn’t there, but it sounds like a fair exchange, Hollywood-style.)
The Trocadero was familiarly known as The Troc. It was a low, colonial-style building that had a long striped canopy. It was more of a social place, a place to meet and greet, than a genuinely good restaurant. The Troc had a maître d’ named Jean, who was a wizard of protocol, always juggling tables and booths so that nobody’s feelings were hurt.
That same year, a far less imposing but ultimately more long-lasting institution opened on La Brea: the Farmers Market. At the time, it was just an empty lot owned by an oil company that began attracting tailgaters who sold produce out of the back of their trucks. But it grew until it became one of the most delightful places in town—you can still get a great breakfast there.
My second wife Marion’s mother was one of the three original waitresses at Dupar’s at the Farmers Market, and she overheard lots of juicy Hollywood gossip while waiting tables. In the early days of Dupar’s, she won a raffle and had her choice of first prizes: a lot far out on Ventura Boulevard or a turkey. Since Ventura Boulevard was little more than a goat path at the time, she chose the turkey, and nobody questioned her decision. A true story, one she never tired of telling.
Years later Marion was in a scene with me in Halls of Montezuma, the first movie in which I got billing. More than ten years after that, Marion and I were married. It’s amazing how often life closes into a circle.
World War II changed Hollywood, and for those four years there was a perceptible sense of economic expansion in the air. Hollywood itself was at full employment, as were the aircraft and shipping industries that were both based on the West Coast.
After Pearl Harbor more than a thousand actors, technicians, directors, and writers beat a path to the enlistment offices to sign up, including some of the biggest stars in the business: Clark Gable, James Stewart, Robert Taylor, Tyrone Power. So did some of the men who ran the studios—Darryl Zanuck went off to war, and William Goetz took over Fox for the duration.
Patriotism exploded. The Hollywood Canteen opened up at 1451 Cahuenga, just south of Sunset. The Canteen was spearheaded by Bette Davis and John Garfield, and funded by money from Ciro’s and Harry Cohn. The property had originally been the site of a joint called the Barn, and all of the Hollywood unions donated material and workers to convert the place. The stars did their part, too—Cary Grant bought a piano, Jack Warner donated linoleum. By the time the Canteen opened in October 1942, it was a very comfortable nightclub with a western theme.
The Canteen opened at six p.m. and closed at midnight. If you were in the service and on leave in California, the Canteen would be your first stop. Soldiers were admitted free of charge, and I remember seeing throngs of them waiting outside by five p.m. Close to twelve hundred men would crowd into the place. John Ford’s wife ran the kitchen. Male stars bused tables, and female stars danced with the soldiers. The music was provided by a rotation of name bands that donated their time. When the band wasn’t playing, comedians and dancers would get up onstage and do their thing.
Ginny Simms entertaining the troops at the Hollywood Canteen.
Everett Collection
The Canteen was an experiment in community mobilization and it was a complete success. It lasted until the end of the war, and I like what it says about the best instincts of people in show business. Some stars showed up only for photo ops, but there were many who took their duties seriously. Marlene Dietrich was there a lot, as was Frances Langford.
The first March of Dimes fund-raising event during World War II massed at Hollywood and Vine, and the turnout was so huge it stopped traffic. The
Red Car that ran down the middle of Hollywood Boulevard couldn’t move. I know—I was stuck there for more than an hour.
Red Skelton mugs it up while Spencer Tracy carves a Thanksgiving turkey for the soldiers at the Hollywood Canteen.
Everett Collection
In other areas patriotism stopped at the studio door. The war years meant many sacrifices for the rest of the country, but they were comfortable for Hollywood. Although “rationing” became one of the keywords of the war, when it came to the stars and the people who presented them, those restrictions didn’t apply. Within the studios you could get nylons, gas, filet mignons, and other goods that the rest of America could only dream about.
Movie attendance during this era exploded, reaching as high as 90 million people a week—this in a country whose total population was about 135 million. Everyone was going to the movies.
Bette Davis serving cigarettes to the boys.
Everett Collection
After the war, the Hollywood social scene slowly began to change, although many nightclubs remained on and around the Sunset Strip. Ciro’s, Billy Wilkerson’s other great success, was still a place to go in the 1950s. It opened at 8433 Sunset, the heart of the Strip, at the end of January 1940 and immediately became a magnet for stars and heavyweights in the industry. As always, Wilkerson gave his nightclub a luxurious setting befitting a Hollywood movie. The walls were draped in ribbed silk dyed a pale green, and the ceiling was painted the muted red of an American Beauty rose. There were sofas along the walls, with silk coverings dyed to match the ceiling. The lighting fixtures were custom made in the shape of bronze columns and urns.