# Ambassador Hotel (Los Angeles)

The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles was in operation from 1921 to 1989. The hotel, designed by Myron Hunt, was home to the Cocoanut Grove nightclub, hosted six Oscar ceremonies, and had many celebrities as guests. The Ambassador Hotel was the site of the 1968 assassination of United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Despite some efforts to preserve the hotel as a historic site, demolition of the hotel was started in 2005 and completed in 2006.

## Quotes

* The AMBASSADOR HOTEL, 3400 Wilshire Blvd., a vast rambling structure whose spreading tile-roofed wings faintly suggest the buildings of northern Italy, sits far back from the street behind a huge expanse of lawn and is surrounded by its cottages. In the hotel are a bank, brokerage office, post office, library, 35 retail shops, and a motion-picture theatre; on the grounds are a swimming pool with artificial beaches of white sand and an 18-hole miniature golf course.
** Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration, Los Angeles in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to the City of Angels. Univerity of California Press. 2011. p. 182. (with an introduction by David Kipen)
* 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 speciality 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.
** George Geary, "Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel". L.A.'s Legendary Restaurants: Celebrating the Famous Places Where Hollywood Ate, Drank, and Played. Santa Monica Press. 2016. ISBN 1595808019.
* The vine-covered pergola entrance to the hotel emphasized the hotel's garden ambiance. ... The Ambassador Hotel, built 1919–1921, is an expansive structure surrounded by cottages and sited far back from the street behind a vast expanse of lawn. Like the Biltmore, it hosted early Academy Award banquets. The Cocoanut Grove ballroom was famous throughout the United States for its Saturday night broadcasts of the popular jazz and swing era bands performing at the hotel.
** Portia Lee and Jeffrey Samudio, Los Angeles, California. Images of America Book Series. Arcadia Publishing. 2001. p. 30. ISBN 0738508128.
* The 1967 film The Graduate is one of the first to be filmed partly on a location in a hotel lobby, in this case the renowned Ambassador Hotel at 3400 Wilshire Boulevard, the main street between Beverly Hills and downtown Los Angeles. ... The Ambassador Hotel was also used for scenes for the filming of Pretty Woman, released in 1990 ...
** Anne Massey, "Chapter 2. Learning from Los Angeles: Hollywood hotel lobbies". Historic Hotels of Los Angeles and Hollywood. Images of America Book Series. Arcadia Publishing. 2008. pp. 49–58. ISBN 0738559067. (quotes from pp. 54–55; edited by Linda McCann, Dace Taube, Claude Zachary, and Curtis C. Roseman)
* Lugosi stayed at the Ambassador Hotel during his 1928 stage version of Dracula, reveling in the tennis courts, golf course, and swimming pool.
** Gary Don Rhodes, Lugosi: His Life in Films, on Stage, and in the Hearts of Horror Lovers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. 2006. p. 42. ISBN 0786427655.

## External links

* Encyclopedic article on Ambassador Hotel (Los Angeles) on Wikipedia