Daily Blague

This is the once-fabled Cocoanut Grove, a huge nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel somewhere out on Wilshire Boulevard - currently, I believe, an administration building of the Los Angeles public schools.  I was never in the Grove, but I did stay at the hotel for few days in 1962. It is the black hole of my memories of a trip from Kansas City to Liberal, Kansas, thence to Santa Fe, Los Angeles, San Franciso, and, finally, to Davenport, Iowa and Chicago. The only thing that comes back about Los Angeles is that the daughter of my mother's oldest uncle, named "Tiger Lilly," drove us along Sunset Strip. I did not believe then and I don't believe now that nice people live in Los Angeles. There is something terribly wrong with the place.

Everybody knows by now that when Hattie McDaniel showed up here to accept her Gone With The Wind Oscar, she was ushered in through the kitchen. Let's hope that some parallel dishonor does not doom attempts to save the Plaza Hotel here in New York. The exterior, thankfully, can't be touched, and there's some hope that the new owners will be shamed into living up to their new acquisition. We'll let you know more after Kathleen's birthday party in ten days - we're booked for the Palm Court.