At the Plaza Page 4
Over its forty-one-year run, the nightclub showcased an impressive array of talent. The opening act—Tony and Renee DeMarco (here)—were veterans of the exhibition dancing circuit, a popular nightclub entertainment since the days of Vernon and Irene Castle, which enjoyed renewed popularity in the thirties largely due to the success of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The DeMarcos made a career of it, later marking their “triumphant return” to the Persian Room in October 1946. Alternating with them on opening night was the Emil Coleman Orchestra, whose performance was broadcast over the Blue Network; live radio shows from the room continued intermittently until the late 1950s.
The Persian Room underwent a number of redecorations over the years, most significantly in 1950 and 1973. The view here was made two days before it opened. The whiskey bottle and cocktail glasses on the table in the foreground were no doubt carefully arranged to make sure the message was clear: Prohibition was over!
The Persian Room Murals
Here, Lillian Gaertner Palmedo, the artist who painted the Persian Room murals, touches up her work just before the opening, in a photograph no doubt staged for publicity purposes. Given Palmedo’s costume and shoes, it seems unlikely that there is any paint on her brush at all.
A minor artist of the thirties, Palmedo is best remembered for the five murals she made for the nightclub, which depicted the pleasures of dancing, hunting, eating, and drinking, Persian-style. Featured conspicuously in advertisements, the murals were forever identified with the room, much in the way that zebra skin was associated with El Morocco; they also launched a brief vogue for all things Persian across the country, when turbans and a color known as Persian blue became fashionable for a time. In 1940, the murals were slightly repainted to harmonize with a new color scheme, then removed altogether when the room was redecorated by Henry Dreyfuss in 1950. Their current whereabouts are unknown.
Here, they are prominently featured on the cover of a 1937 menu.
Persian Room Menu, October 14, 1937
Although some dishes—anchovy canapés, roast partridge, vegetable marrow, cherries jubilee—have gone out of style, such standards as fresh caviar and baby lamb also appear on this fall Persian Room menu.
Conrad Hilton Buys The Plaza
Thirty-six years of continuous original ownership came to an end when The Plaza was sold in 1943 to Conrad Hilton, “the King of Innkeepers,” in partnership with the Atlas Corporation, a holding company. Hilton was not yet a builder but, rather, an acquirer of hotels, and he had amassed a fleet of hostelries across the country by buying them at cut-rate post-Depression prices; The Plaza (admittedly not in the best repair at the time) was had for the bargain sum of $7.5 million. Though permanent guests and the old guard braced themselves for a lowering of standards, their fears proved groundless. “I buy tradition and make the most of it,” Hilton announced, although he did implement a number of subtle (and not so subtle) alterations that would forever change the place.
These changes were a result of “digging for gold,” a Hilton credo for finding ways to maximize profitability in his properties, with prime gold digging usually concentrated in the lobby areas. Thus, Hilton’s first action at The Plaza was to remove the brokerage firm of E. F. Hutton from its ground-floor parkside office (monthly rental: $416); in its place, he installed the Oak Bar, immediately one of the hotel’s most popular—and lucrative—spaces. Similarly, a basement storage area that once housed the Grill Room was transformed into the Rendez-vous supper club, mezzanine writing rooms overlooking the lobby were sealed off and remade into rooms for private functions, and vitrines—glass showcases rented out for product display—were installed for the first time throughout the lobby area. More controversially, the leaded-glass dome over the Palm Court was removed and replaced with a flat baroque ceiling to allow for central air conditioning and even more space for private functions above it.
Hilton retained control of the hotel until 1953. Here, a hotel brochure circa 1950, and here, the hotelier with singer Hildegarde. Here, Hilton proudly poses in front of the Fifth Avenue entrance of his peerless trophy.
The Incomparable Hildegarde
The performer most associated with the Persian Room (and record holder for the most performances there—over one hundred weeks) first rose to prominence as a café singer during World War II. Born Hildegarde Loretta Sell, she was simply known by her first name (“the Incomparable” moniker was added later by an overzealous press agent) and began her career as a pianist. Her renown grew after she cut her teeth performing in Europe, and by the time she returned to Manhattan at the start of the war, she had acquired a signature song—“Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup”—as well as several trademark accessories: elbow-length gloves, worn while playing the piano, and an endless supply of lace handkerchiefs (the tent card below right acknowledges her hankies with its own tiny version).
Although she performed in many other city nightclubs, Hildegarde established a cult following at The Plaza, and, at the height of her fame in the forties, she also hosted her own radio show and held endorsement contracts for perfume, nail polish, hosiery, and wallpaper. In addition, she made a notable contribution to the war effort by selling hundreds of war bonds in return for performing a song. Indeed, her rendition of “The Last Time I Saw Paris” epitomizes for a certain generation the heightened emotions of the war years. She made her last appearance in the Persian Room in January 1975, and no doubt she would be performing there today had the room not closed that same year.
Here, pictured on the cover of a magazine for Hilton employees, the singer introduces actress Mary Martin to a Persian Room audience; below left, a newspaper advertisement circa 1950.
Colonel Serge Obolensky
This significant figure in Plaza history might not be very well known today, but in his time, he was a noted man about town. Born a White Russian prince, Obolensky was educated at Oxford and was married briefly to a Romanov, until forced to flee his homeland by the Bolshevik army. After emigrating to the United States, he married again—and well—taking the hand of Alice Astor, daughter of John Jacob Astor. Through this family connection, he began his career as a hotelier at the Astor-owned St. Regis. During World War II (when he was in his mid-fifties), he served with distinction as a colonel in the U.S. Army Air Forces, parachuting into Sardinia behind German lines.
After the war, he returned to New York (asking to be addressed as Colonel Obolensky, as was the fashion at the time), and in 1946, he was named promotion and public-relations director of The Plaza. Though his tenure was brief—only three years—Obolensky left his mark on the hotel, overseeing the Hilton remodeling of the lobbies, the Palm Court, and the Terrace Room. In addition, he created the Rendez-vous restaurant, a Russian-themed boîte in the basement space that once housed the Grill, and initiated celebrity suites in the hotel proper, luxury apartments designed and named for luminaries of that era—designer Christian Dior, author Somerset Maugham, interior decorator Lady Mendl, and photographer Cecil Beaton. More significantly, Obolensky orchestrated a fortieth anniversary party for The Plaza, which resulted in the hotel being called “legendary” for the first time and which set the stage for it being given landmark status twenty-two years later. (Here, the program for this party.)
Here, he is pictured after one of Hildegarde’s openings in the Persian Room with the singer and Joseph Binns, then general manager of the hotel. And here, dancing with Cary Grant’s wife, the heiress Barbara Hutton, on Navy Night in the Ballroom.
The Oak Bar
While the Oak Bar has the appearance of being part of Plaza tradition from its inception, it is a relatively new addition, established in 1945. Originally designed as a brokerage office, the space had been converted into an unnamed barroom (an informal adjunct to the much grander watering hole next door) for an eight-year period, beginning in 1912. This incarnation ended with the arrival of Prohibition; the space was then leased to E. F. Hutton for use as a satellite office. When the hotel was acquired by Conrad Hilton,
he realized the commercial potential this space’s prime location offered, so he summarily moved the brokerage firm to a mezzanine space in the Fifth Avenue lobby and set about reestablishing this area as a bar.
The photograph here was made just before the officially named Oak Bar was opened to the public on January 13, 1945. Postwar modernism is reflected in its three-dimensional linoleum and contemporary furnishings done in a red-white-and-black color scheme; a wooden floor and more traditional accessories (that is, brown leather club chairs and banquettes) have taken their place today. The finishing touches that made the room all the more memorable—Everett Shinn’s three murals of the hotel—were not yet fully in place when this photograph was taken. Although the painting over the bar can be seen reflected in the mirror, a companion mural on the east wall had yet to be installed.
Here, the mural for the east wall in place, in a picture from a Life magazine story. The banquette shown here would later make cinematic history: Cary Grant would be kidnapped from it in the first reel of North by Northwest, setting in motion The Plaza’s career as a movie star—but that would lie some years ahead. Here, the cover of the room’s menu.
The Shinn Murals
A warm, clubby ambience offset by windows overlooking Central Park assured the Oak Bar’s popularity from the start, but the three murals by the painter Everett Shinn, commissioned specifically for the room, provided its crowning touch. Shinn began his career in 1897 as a newspaper sketch artist, but he soon turned to fine art, painting realistic urban street scenes. His reputation was made in 1908 after a group exhibition with eight similarly influenced painters (including John Sloan and William Glackens) at New York’s Macbeth Gallery. The Eight, as these artists were known—or, more derogatorily, the Ashcan School—shocked aesthetes with their gritty portrayals of contemporary city life. Although Shinn would later turn to the more refined worlds of society and theater for his subject matter, he would forever be identified as an Ashcan painter.
In 1944, he began the Oak Bar murals, three nostalgic scenes of Plaza environs. On the west wall was a mist-shrouded view of Central Park South around 1908, as seen from the vantage point of Columbus Circle. Over the bar was a moonlit rendering of the modern Pulitzer Fountain. The most famous of the murals, a depiction of the open plaza in front of the hotel and the Vanderbilt mansion, decorated the east wall (shown here).
The murals’ renown and value grew so over the years that every time the hotel changed hands, separate negotiations were undertaken for their purchase. This rather complex arrangement finally came to an end in 1988 when Donald Trump bought the property and the murals for one inclusive sum. Finally, Shinn’s art and the hotel that housed it had become inseparable.
The George M. Cohan Corner
A hyphenate long before the word was coined, Broadway’s George M. Cohan was a consummate showman, boasting a résumé that included credits as composer, playwright, actor, producer, and theater owner; among his many accomplishments was that of being the only person ever awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for a song, the rousing World War I anthem “Over There.”
By the mid-1930s, it became Cohan’s habit to take pretheater cocktails in the Oak Room, and his preferred table was the booth in its northwest corner, which afforded a fine view of all comings and goings. It soon became known as his headquarters, where he was courted by both friends and would-be friends, many of whom were looking for work. After his death in 1942, a number of memorials were proposed in his honor, including a statue to be erected somewhere in the city. The Lambs, a theatrical club, petitioned The Plaza to affix a bronze plaque above the Oak Room booth that he loved so much, and after approval by the Hilton organization, it was put in place on April 24, 1946. The dedication, captured here, shows Cohan’s pals, actors William Gaxton and Victor Moore, along with Raymond Peck, Shepherd of the Lambs, and Plaza owner Conrad Hilton. The plaque remains there to this day, and the Cohan Corner, as it is now known, is still considered the Oak Room’s best table.
The municipal statue of Cohan took a lot longer to arrive; it was finally erected in 1959 in Duffy Square on Broadway between Forty-sixth and Forty-seventh streets—a site that, coincidentally, was one of the proposed locales for the Sherman Monument, which instead came to rest in Grand Army Plaza.
Here, Cohan’s portrait, taken in the late 1930s by photographer Carl Van Vechten.
The Cecil Beaton Suite
As part of The Plaza’s rebirth as a Hilton hotel property, four celebrity suites were created, apartments named for (and, in some cases, designed by) luminaries of the time. The first to be recruited was British photographer Cecil Beaton, an old chum of Serge Obolensky, the mastermind behind the celebrity suites. As part of the agreement, Beaton was allowed to lease the apartment at half price whenever he visited New York.
A large suite, 249–251, was chosen and the redecoration completed in just two weeks at the end of 1945. Furnishing it had been simple enough, for Beaton selected much of the decor from a stock of old hotel furniture that had been banished to a subbasement storage room. The result was eclectic, to say the least: A bust of Racine rested beneath a modern lithograph, while rococo gilt-framed mirrors played off of turn-of-the-century moldings. Beaton remarked, “If you have one good thing in your room, it acts as ballast for the rest,” and in this case, the one good thing was a centrally placed coffee table, not rescued from subbasement storage but, instead, purchased specifically for the suite. The resulting stage-set feel (here) reflected Beaton’s latest enthusiasm, set design (among his projects at the time was the staging of the ballet Moths and the play Lady Windermere’s Fan).
Beaton used the suite as his New York base until the early 1950s, when Serge Obolensky decamped from The Plaza for a position at the Sherry-Netherland. Beaton soon followed, and later designed a suite in that hotel that also bore his name.
Greta Garbo in the Cecil Beaton Suite
In February 1946, British designer/photographer Cecil Beaton checked into The Plaza for an extended visit. Not long after he was settled into the suite that he had decorated and which was named in his honor, he was reintroduced to actress Greta Garbo at a cocktail party. The pair had met briefly years before, but this time, something clicked and a friendship began. Beaton, like the rest of the world, was fascinated by the enigmatic star. Five years before, at the height of her fame, Garbo had stopped making movies, and what she would do next was an ongoing topic of public discussion (the answer—nothing—would no doubt have disappointed everyone).
As the friendship developed, Garbo visited Beaton several times at The Plaza, and one day, the subject of her soon-to-expire passport came up. She needed a picture made for the document, and she coyly hinted that she might choose Beaton for the job. He leapt at the chance. The following day, he had the hotel send up a screen to use as a backdrop and pinned a sign on his door: PASSPORT PHOTOS TAKEN HERE.
The star arrived in a buoyant mood, and a few official-looking portraits were taken. Then Beaton suggested some informal shots, and Garbo, to his surprise, agreed. This series of pictures (the “passport photos,” as they were archly referred to) was taken by the east window of Room 249 and given the full glamour treatment; Beaton later said that they “crowned my photographic career.” Garbo was upset when he sold fourteen of the pictures to Vogue, but she maintained an on-again, off-again friendship with Beaton for the rest of her life. Revisionist biographers claim that the pair conducted a four-month-long love affair in Beaton’s suite, but this seems unlikely, given what is known of their personal lives. There is no doubt that Beaton was in love, however, as this luminous portrait demonstrates.
Here, the couple on a Manhattan street in 1951, with Garbo assuming a more characteristic pose.
The Duke and Duchess of Windsor Celebrate an Anniversary
Although more closely associated with the Waldorf-Astoria, where they maintained a residence that still bears their name, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, one of the most fabled couples of the century, patronized
The Plaza frequently after the war. They made a notable public appearance in the hotel’s Ballroom on December 11, 1946.
The occasion was the December Ball, a benefit for disabled veterans, and what made it auspicious was that it fell on the tenth anniversary of the duke’s abdication of the throne of England in favor of the woman he loved. Though the significance of the abdication had been somewhat diminished following the turmoil of a world war, it still held the public’s imagination, and the press came out in record numbers to record the anniversary (here).
The Windsors appear in a festive mood in the photograph, even if the reality of their future existence was becoming all too plain: They would never be allowed to return to England, and the years ahead would be spent in aimless wanderings among the playgrounds of international society. Still, they presented a united front and carried on in style. As always, they are immaculately turned out here: the duchess in a draped emerald gown, the duke the model of Savile Row chic.
The Rendez-vous
Following the enactment of Prohibition, the subterranean space on the Fifty-ninth Street side that originally housed the Grill Room had been used as a storage area. Conrad Hilton’s acquisition of the hotel immediately brought an end to that. Following his dictum of “making the space pay,” Hilton asked his resident tastemaker, Serge Obolensky, to remake the room into a restaurant. The result, the Rendez-vous, a nostalgic interpretation of old Russia, was part of the wave of czarist-themed supper clubs that sprouted around Manhattan after the war.