Category: Quotes
“High blood pressure, cheeriness at breakfast, a mellowing political philosophy, and an inability to drink more than half a bottle of proof spirits at cocktail time without falling over the fire irons all suggest dark wings hovering overhead and the impending midnight croak of the raven.”
– Lucius Beebe, frequent Garden of Allah Hotel resident
Christopher Isherwood
“We went to Cafe Gala on the Strip. My farewell visit to the End of the Night. I haven’t been been to a place of this sort in ages, and it was so nostalgically reminiscent of all the other times — the baroque decorations and the cozy red velvet corners, the sharp-faced peroxide pianist with tender memories and a tongue like an adder, the grizzled tomcat tenor, the bitch with a heart of gold, the lame celebrity, the bar mimosa, the public lovers, the amazed millionaire tourist, the garlanded cow, the plumed serpent and the daydream sailor … I have loved them all very much and learnt something from each of them. I owe them many of my vividest moments of awareness. But enough is enough. And here we say goodbye.”
— Christopher Isherwood, writing in his diary on Feb. 3, 1943, after a visit to Cafe Gala, 1114 Horn Ave. [map] the eve of entering a Vedanta monastery on Ivar Avenue. (Diaries 1:265-66)
“I took my first trip to Los Angeles to visit my older brother, Ken, who was an actor working in Hollywood. I was 16, and he was in his early twenties, which felt like a big difference at that age. One of the first nights he took me to the Sunset Strip. This was the late 1950s, so there were these coffeehouses where people played drums, drank coffee, and read poetry—that kind of beatnik stuff. We walked into a place, and there was a young Marlon Brando—at the beginning of his fame—playing the bongos with people gathered around him. It was one of my first impressions of L.A., and it was quite an impression.”
— Christopher Walken, in Los Angeles Magazine, recalling his first visit to Los Angeles
Truman Capote, photographed by Henri Cartier Bresson in 1947
“I am living in a very posh establishment, the Sunset Tower, which, or so the local gentry tell me, is where every scandal that ever happened happened.”
– Truman Capote, age 24, in Los Angeles in 1947 to write an essay on Hollywood for Vogue.
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