As awards season approaches, one can hardly imagine that it will provide an image as iconic as one morning-after shot taken by the pool of the Beverly Hills Hotel in 1977. A woman in a gold dressing gown and silver heels reclines, deep in thought, in a white chair. The pool stretches out behind her in all its turquoise glory; she’s surrounded by newspapers; on a table are pots of tea, a lighter, and an Oscar for best actress.
The woman is Faye Dunaway, who’d won the Oscar the previous evening and reportedly hadn’t slept much before her then boyfriend Terry O’Neill snapped what would go on to become one of the most famous celebrity portraits of the 20th century. The newspaper headlines tell the story. Her Network co-star Peter Finch had won a posthumous Oscar to join Dunaway’s; he’d died of a heart attack in the hotel’s lobby two months earlier.
That was almost half a century ago but it’s just one of many moments of Hollywood lore that the Beverly Hills Hotel can claim as its own. Others include the LA hotspot being the inspiration behind The Eagles’ classic “Hotel California”, as well as the place where Elizabeth Taylor honeymooned six times – legend has it that she and Richard Burton had a standing room-service order that included two bottles of vodka with breakfast followed by another two at lunch.
Read more: Why LA to Palm Springs is the perfect California road trip
The Beverly Hills Hotel is also where the reclusive tycoon Howard Hughes lived for 30 years in one of the infamous bungalows, obsessively watching movies while naked but for a pink hotel napkin; his was number three, bungalow number one was Marilyn Monroe’s and number nine was favoured by Charlie Chaplin. The fashion designer Halston was nearly kicked out for refusing to sign his full name on the register in 1976; John Lennon and Yoko Ono spent a week in bed there in the Seventies (in the 7ft by 8ft bed that had once been Marlene Dietrich’s); Paul McCartney and Linda Eastman, meanwhile, fell in love at the hotel, according to The Beatles’ tour manager – he described watching the thunderbolt strike as they gazed at one another in McCartney’s bungalow suite.
It’s also where Lindsay Lohan left behind a list of all the…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at The Independent Travel…