Angels on Highland Avenue
Chateau Marmont, Lee Strasberg, and Kanye West.
On Tuesday afternoon I got coffee with one of the most IYKYK girls in town, Brooke Callahan. You may have seen her cotton poplin pants here, and here. I’ve known Brooke since 2019, before she started making clothes, when she was selling glass jewelry sourced from Rome. Callahan confessed to me that she only subscribes to fashion newsletters. She asked how I plan to write about fashion on Jelly Sandwich, but before I could answer, she said she “doesn’t give a sh*t” about fashion history. Unfortunately for Brooke, I do give a sh*t.
Brooke went on to say “you should definitely overshare.” I told her I plan to. I then disclosed that this week I’m not writing about fashion, and that I’m writing about Chateau Marmont.
My first acquaintance with Chateau Marmont was in 2019, the same visit when I’d drive past Warner Brothers and tear up at the sight of my first soundstage. Hollywood right before my eyes! I went to the Castle for dinner with an ex-boyfriend and remember nothing besides being very afraid to take photos, but feeling very cool that I was there with my popular boyfriend.
In January of this year, I watched Kanye West and his wife, Bianca Censori sprint out of the lobby of Chateau Marmont. Earlier that same night, my girlfriends and I poured into Suite 11 to celebrate Ari’s birthday. Unfortunately, our 8 pm reservation spot was no longer available due to a “VIP” guest who had swiped the best seat in the house. The host told Ari that there was a “change of plans” and that our party of 8 would have to be moved to another table for the time being. None of us were wearing the Yeezy sock shoes (YZY Pods), but we were adorned in Ralph Lauren, Maryam Nassir Zadeh, Celine, and the like.
Not 20 minutes after receiving our martinis (seltzer with bitters for me) did a brick come flying through the stained glass window at the back of the room. On impact, everyone ducked, gasping. A small dog seated with an older couple close to the window started barking. The noise was so loud that people weren’t sure if it was a gun or an entire tray of China falling onto the piano. I grabbed Devon’s hand while I watched West and Censori scurry out. We assumed that this was a direct attack on Kanye after his recent comments in the media.
Everything turned to complete frenzy in a matter of seconds. Coco and I bolted to the hallway right off the main lobby, convinced that the attack was going to continue, and shortly. However, no one seemed to be leaving or even freaking out at all. It was just another normal night. This was nothing they haven’t dealt with before, and with grace.
The room eventually returned to its romantic buzz, and we were now sitting in our original spot as the Very Important Person with a swim shoe addiction had fled the scene. I went up to our server privately to ask what really happened, was the plan to ambush Kanye? Was it paparazzi? She told me it was an unhoused person and that there is an alley on that side of the building. She shrugged it off as if it was something that happens all the time.
I’d put off reading Shawn Levy’s book Castle on Sunset until I read Naomi Fry’s piece about how “the Chateau is back” (if Bret Easton Ellis says it, it must be true?) Another ex of mine (yikes!) was reading it when he came to visit me in September of 2020 when he was writing a piece about Duke Nicholson, Luka Sabbat, and George Cortina’s long stay there during Covid. The Chateau felt completely unapproachable to me. I didn’t see how someone like me (low self esteem) could casually hang out in a place like that, much less live there for many months.
When I finally picked up Castle on Sunset a month ago, I was instantly hooked. After leafing through the pages I landed on a goldmine, “virtually every important performer associated with the first wave of Method acting checked into the Chateau on his or her initial sojourn to lotusland, and they were often quite frank about preferring it above all over hotels because it made them feel as if they were still in New York and hadn’t yet succumbed to the intoxicating luxuries associated with the movies.”
I started studying the Method last fall, the technique of acting that the Actors Studio coined. In the late 1940’s, members of the Actor’s Studio began poking their way into Hollywood, and therefore the Chateau Marmont. The Actor’s Studio, were a group of actors and directors previously known as The Group Theatre where the Method Acting technique came to life. Lee Strasberg, one of the founders of The Group Theatre (along with Harold Clerman and Cheryl Crawford), developed the Method based on the teachings of Konstantin Stanislavski.
The Method is a psychological form of acting that’s interested in the revelation of why a character does what it does, not just showing what they do. Soon after The Method developed, it quickly became the most popular way to study acting. Young actors at that time were either studying with Strasberg, Adler, or Meisner. Renowned performances of the Method include Marlon Brando in Streetcar Named Desire, James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause, Montgomery Clift in I Confess, to Ellen Burstyn in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, etc, etc, etc.
Lee Strasberg became Marilyn Monroe’s mentor soon after their first meeting in 1955, and Paula (his first wife) her acting coach. Monroe had a very close relationship with the Strasberg’s, some say that she was a part of their family. They took her in when they saw how misunderstood she was by the entire world. After Monroe’s death in 1962, she passed on 75% of her estate to Lee and Anna Strasberg (Lee’s second wife). In an interview, she says of Strasberg, “I think he changed my life more than any other human being.” Lee says of Monroe, “Next to Marlon, she had the greatest sensitivity of any actor or actress that I’ve seen. The public never had the opportunity to see what we saw.”
Clifford Odets, another member of the Group Theatre, also lived for a time at the Chateau. He helped write the script for Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without A Cause while also the author of Golden Boy, Waiting for Lefty, and Awake and Sing!. James Dean compared meeting Odets to meeting George Bernard Shaw, a renowned playwright of the early 1900’s.
Dean was a regular at Googie's, an old coffee shop on the Sunset Strip (Sunset and Crescent Heights) that was frequented by the likes of Natalie Wood and Marilyn Monroe. Now lies 8000 West Sunset (great name for a shopping center) which includes the Landmark Theatre in a shopping center with a European Wax Center, CB2, Crunch Fitness, and Jojo’s Mediterranean Grill, among others.
Schwab's Pharmacy was the other watering hole on the block. Gossip columnist Sidney Skolsky would set up shop in a booth, surveilling the place for action. Last week at LACMA, I saw a familiar image in Ed Ruscha’s Now/Then from Every Building on the Sunset Strip, 1966: Schwab’s Pharmacy. What a shame it closed down. Now we have Stir Crazy.
The drama of Chateau Marmont, of that January evening, encourages me to spend more of my days there. I swear there’s angels at the top of that hill. The one you see driving up Highland Avenue. Even in the fog of early February you can see them. There’s ghosts all over Hollywood. I know it because they ride with me in my station wagon. When I go for lunch I see people that are so clearly tourists—craving the allure, the glamour—they want to experience it for themselves, of course. As for me, isn’t that why I’m writing this? I’m no tourist, I live in Hollywood, and boyyyy is it heaven.