TAKE A LOOK: Hidden L.A. is beginning a series of clips of the once grand, star-studded Ambassador Hotel. Legend has it that Zelda Fitzgerald (F. Scott's wife) lit her lingerie on fire in one of the bungalow bathtubs; history has recorded it, that it was the site of one of America's shocking tragedies -- the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. After that moment, the hotel, once one of the jewels of Wilshire Boulevard, went into steep decline. By the 1980s it was run-down-at the heels and musty but still evoked an air of elegance -- great bones, you know. 
For most of its final years, before it was closed to the public in 1989, razed in 2006, (after a protracted battle) the site was often rented out for filming (Hoffa, Forrest Gump, Pretty Woman, L.A. Stories). But truly, if you were quiet enough, you could hear the ghosts dancing in the old grand ballrooms or sitting in the rose garden adjacent to the Palm Bar where natty Korean businessmen and East Hollywood types, with their chipped black-lacquered nails and bed-hair, shared barstools. L.A. at it most old-world-swank and stately. It's one of my most special pieces of L.A. history, lost.
For most of its final years, before it was closed to the public in 1989, razed in 2006, (after a protracted battle) the site was often rented out for filming (Hoffa, Forrest Gump, Pretty Woman, L.A. Stories). But truly, if you were quiet enough, you could hear the ghosts dancing in the old grand ballrooms or sitting in the rose garden adjacent to the Palm Bar where natty Korean businessmen and East Hollywood types, with their chipped black-lacquered nails and bed-hair, shared barstools. L.A. at it most old-world-swank and stately. It's one of my most special pieces of L.A. history, lost.
Gone.
-- L.G.
top photo caption: entrance to the Ambassador Hotel
top photo credit: www.hollywoodheritage.org
photo credit: Diane Friedman, from the website, Location Managers Guild of America
bottom photo caption: One last look at the Ambassador, shot from the fire escape of the Gaylord Apartments, February 15, 2007
