Garden of Allah: Martin Turnbull unpacks wild Hollywood hang

by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent

When you hear the “Summer of ’37” and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Hollywood dead-end adventure in writing discussed as if only yesterday, then you would be listening to the outstanding author Martin Turnbull who has mined that era with a fine tooth comb. So get your “Top Hat, White Tie and Tails” out for this one and swing back to the Golden Decades of Screenwriting at one of the most storied spots in Hollywood, The Garden of Allah. Think silent star Nazimova, and her European salon-style accommodation that became a magnet for high-fliers, dragonflies, and fireflies of the 30’s and 40’s.

Better to let Hollywood’s Garden of Allah series author Turnbull tell it… like it was.

Q: What made the mystique of Garden of Allah?

I think the mystique of the Garden of Allah Hotel comes from several different sources. Before it was a hotel, it was the home of an exotic and dramatic stage-star-turned-movie-star, Alla Nazimova. When she moved to Hollywood, she opened her mansion on Sunset Boulevard to intellectuals, academics, and creatives of all stripes. She would hold Saturday night salons where people discussed art, history, the theater, literature, philosophy, etc. So her address developed the well-known reputation as being a place where interesting people gathered to talk about interesting things. And those in the know were aware that Alla also hosted Sunday afternoon all-girl pool parties. Alla was bisexual and didn’t really care who knew. Her Sunday parties, of course, only served enhance the bohemian reputation of her Sunset Boulevard address.

When it became a hotel, one of the first regular guests was Robert Benchley who was an original member of the Algonquin Round Table in New York. As time went on, and as the Hollywood movie studios lured New York writers with buckets of cash, one by one the Algonquin Round Table people came to L.A. Of course, they wanted to stay where their friends stayed. So when Dorothy Parker arrived, she stayed where Robert Benchley stayed, and pretty soon most of the members of the Algonquin Roundtable were guests of the Garden of Allah at one point or other—if not as guests then attending any number of the parties that went on pretty much every night. And they were all such well-known celebrities and famous wits that it helped cement the Garden of Allah’s reputation.

Thirdly, what made this hotel different from most “nice” hotels is that they did not employ a house detective. Most respectable hotels of this era had one whose job it was to ensure that “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” who were checking in were, in fact, who they said they were. But at the Garden of Allah, that never happened. It got around town that nobody was looking and nobody cared, and so, human behavior being what it is, people knew that anything goes and that they could get away with anything. And they did.

Q: Garden of Allah denizens included F. Scott Fitzgerald. Was he near the end of his life at that time?

In the summer of 1937, Fitzgerald signed a six-month contract at MGM, who had agreed to pay him $1000 a week to write screenplays. It came at a good time for him because life has been difficult for a number of reasons, but mainly because he was broke and in debt. So he came to Hollywood and, of course, like all the other Algonquin Roundtable people, he stayed at the Garden of Allah. Unfortunately it was the worst possible place he could have chosen because the Garden was a nonstop party place and he was at a point in his life where his alcoholism was catching up with him. He really needed to dry out, and he fully intended to, but the lure proved too strong and he returned to drinking. On the plus side, this was when he met his final girlfriend, Hollywood gossip columnist Sheilah Graham. The two of them were together until the end of his life. In fact, he was at her apartment on December 21, 1941, when he collapsed on the floor of her living room apartment a couple of blocks east of the Garden of Allah. It was rather scandalous at the time because they weren’t married. He died of occlusive coronary arteriosclerosis at the all-too-early age of 44.

Q: Did the studios send people to live there, party there? Was it kind of a sanctioned wild venue?

No, I don’t think it was that sort of place. Across the street was the Château Marmont Hotel, which was a slightly classier place where some of the more A-list celebrities and highly paid front office studio people would go to have an affair or just check in for the romantic and/or amorous weekend. The villas at the Garden of Allah were self-contained, which means they had a kitchen. So the sort of people who would check in to the Garden were the sort of people for whom money was a bit of a finite resource and they could save some of it by preparing their own meals.

A typical example would be when Ginger Rogers arrived in town with her mother, Lela. This was in the early 1930s before Ginger went on to become a significant star. When they arrived, they had no idea if Ginger’s career would take off, so they checked into the Garden where they could make their dollars stretch further. Humphrey Bogart checked into the Garden for much the same reason when he came to Hollywood to make “The Petrified Forest” for Warner Bros. His previous effort at breaking into Hollywood had come to nothing, so he had no idea if his second attempt to get his foot in the door would go anyplace. He also returned there in 1945 after he’d moved out of the house he shared with wife #3—Mayo Methot—and while he prepared to marry wife #4—Lauren Bacall.

Generally the people who stayed there came at the start of their careers and were looking to establish themselves in Hollywood. This hotel was a buzzing beehive of people who were creative, ambitious, talented, witty, and gregarious, which is why there was always a party going on and pretty much everybody was invited. So it was a great place to meet people and become friendly with like-minded kindred spirits. So I wouldn’t say that it was a “sanctioned wild venue” in the sense that the people running the studios knew what was going on and were okay with it. It was more the sort of “anything goes“ place that attracted the sorts of people who were up for anything, who enjoyed a drink, who were sociable and relished meeting new people. And if you met somebody who you wanted to take home with you, nobody at the Garden judged you for it—probably because they were angling to do the same thing.

Q: Did blackmail photos ever come out of that place?

None that I have seen.

Q: How much debauchery are we talking?

I think we need to keep in mind that debauchery is a relative term. What might have been considered debaucherous behavior in the 30s and 40s is hardly bound to raise an eyebrow now. In fact, what became commonplace behavior in the Roaring Twenties was, by the more conservative, Depression-era standards of the 1930s, considered rather racy. But generally speaking I don’t know that what went on at the Garden of Allah Hotel was really all that debaucherous Most likely drinking during Prohibition, having an affair with somebody you are not married to, and sometimes while you are married to somebody else.

I’m sure there was probably some drug taking, most likely cocaine. But you have to keep in mind that taking cocaine wasn’t quite the scandalous thing in the 1920s and ‘30s that it became in, say, the ‘80s. Coca-Cola’s original recipe had cocaine in it, hence the name. And of course, people didn’t know the long-term effects of taking large amounts of drugs like that. But by and large, this was a drinking scene, and rather excessive drinking, even by today’s standards. The highly creative people who tended to check into hotel were very gregarious and likely to say yes to any party going. And when people drink to excess, they do things they might not ordinarily do, like wander off with somebody they are not married to, and might not even get as far as the front door of the villa, and opt instead for behind the nearest bougainvillea bush.

Q: Did anyone famous get their career made, or introductions made via this place?

Accommodation at the Garden of Allah weren’t particularly cheap so you either had to have a bit of steam behind your career already or, and this was the more common scenario, you landed in Hollywood with a contract in hand. F Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, and Humphrey Bogart all arrived this way. An exception to this was, perhaps, Ginger Rogers, who arrived in the early 1930s with her mother. I don’t think she had arrived with a contract in hand, but she had made a splash on Broadway and probably came to town with a bunch of promising contracts. It didn’t take her long to kick her career into gear so I’m guessing she was not without connections. So while I don’t know of anyone specific whose career was made or life-changing introductions were made at the Garden of Allah, nevertheless it was a very social and mutually supportive place. The people who stayed there knew how hard it was to get your foot in the Hollywood door, and to keep it there. So anybody who scored a win was supported and congratulated— usually with a round of drinks, or cocktail party, or dinner . . . or all three.

Q: What was the party circuit of Golden Age of Hollywood in relation to it?

It was a place where everybody knew that if they were going to a party there, they were going to have a good time. It was also a fairly relaxed place. So this wasn’t like going to a party at Pickfair, dinner at Edie and Bill Goetz, whose dinners were glittering, A-list, formal affairs with all the jewels and finery on display. It was, more likely than not, more of a “come as you are“ type of party scene. This was, of course, a more formal time, so wasn’t it wasn’t like people showed up in tank tops and flip-flops. People made an effort, of course, but it was a more relaxed scene. And at some of the more raucous affairs, I would imagine that at the back of some peoples’ minds there was a distinct possibility that they may end up in the pool fully clothed.

Q: What are your top picks of Garden of Allah stories?

My favorite story involves two people who couldn’t be more different and yet they ended up staying at the Garden of Allah at the same time. In the late 1920s, the great Russian composer, Sergei Rachmaninoff, checked in to the hotel. As it happens, Harpo Marx was his downstairs neighbor, but didn’t know it. All Harpo knew was that his upstairs neighbor made a lot of annoying noise. So in retaliation, Harpo retaliated by playing his piano. As fate would have it, he chose to play the first 64 bars of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto #1, over and over, as loud as he could, until it had the desired effect of driving his neighbor from the Garden. It wasn’t until Rachmaninoff had moved out that Marx was told who he was. Harpo felt badly about how he’d handled that, but the story illustrates how people across the entire creative spectrum filled the Garden of Allah right from the very start.

Q: And of course, why do we still romanticize and know about the spot?

I suspect that we still romanticize the Garden of Allah because, in a way, it was a microcosm of Hollywood itself. And not just Hollywood, but Hollywood at the height of its studio-era golden age. When you look at the list of the residents and guests of the hotel – it’s a virtual who’s who of Hollywood – actors, movie stars, writers, directors – who helped create what was practically a new art form and elevate it to a huge influence on American, and therefore global, culture.

Plus, it is a snapshot into how people behaved when nobody was looking. The all-powerful Production Code dictated what could not be seen or heard of the screen. But life at the Garden of Allah was real life lived by real people, for all their flaws and in all their glory. There was really no other place quite like it, or that lasted quite as long, which struck me as being a very fertile place for storytelling. In fact, I was quite amazed that nobody had thought to tell its story the way that I have with my series of novels. I thought, “Somebody needs to tell the story,” and so I did.

Martin Turnbull’s Hollywood & Garden of Allah novels:
The Garden on Sunset
The Trouble with Scarlett
Citizen Hollywood
Searchlights and Shadows
Reds in the Beds
Twisted Boulevard
Tinseltown Confidential
City of Myths
Closing Credits

Plus two other titles in addition to this list, Chasing Salomé: a novel of 1920s Hollywood and The Heart of the Lion: a novel of Irving Thalberg’s Hollywood, and latest release “All the Gin Joints” available now.

Naturally, this newest novel is the first of a trilogy, Hollywood on the Homefront.

Find out more about this insider of Golden Hollywood here.

Thanks so much to Martin Turnbull for his time and scholarship of the period.

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