The Garden of Allah

by Sheilah Graham

The Garden of Allah in Hollywood was a prison and a playground, a santuary and a glorified whorehouse, where the greats of Hollywood's golden years could carry on their private lives unobserved by the public eye. In her new book, the celebrated columnist Sheilah Graham takes readers behind the walls of this fabled hideaway to bring them the inside story of the madcap existence of its inhabitants.
As the author notes, "In the thirty-two year span of its life, the Garden would witness robbery, murder, drunkenness, despair, divorce, marriage, orgies, pranks, fights, suicides, frustration, and hope. Yet intellectuals and celebrities from all over the world were to find it a convenient haven and a fascinating home."

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Media Tie In, Biography

258 pages, hardcover

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Sheilah Graham (15 September 1904 – 17 November 1988) was an English-born, nationally-syndicated American gossip columnist during Hollywood's "Golden Age". Along with Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper, Graham came to wield sufficient power to make or break Hollywood careers – prompting her to describe herself as "the last of the unholy trio."

Graham was also known for her relationship with F. Scott Fitzgerald, a relationship she played a significant role in immortalizing, through her autobiographical account of that period, Beloved Infidel, a best-seller, which was also made into a film. In her youth, she had been a showgirl, and a freelance writer for Fleet Street in London, and had published several short stories and two novels. These early experiences would converge in her career in Hollywood, that spanned nearly four decades, as a successful columnist and author.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Evan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Before I review this blast of a mess, consider the following (partial) cast of characters -- some of the actors, writers, infamous scoundrels and others who stayed at our venue of interest, The Garden of Allah, a briefly fashionable then tatty and squalid kitsch-chic Spanish villa hotel in West Hollywood on the Sunset Strip of Sunset Blvd. during the Golden Age of Tinseltown from 1927 to 1959.

The book was written by the youthful third-wheel, Sheilah Graham, of the infamous triumvirate of feared gossip columnists that included Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, the ladies who decided your show-biz career, more or less. The ones who'd tell the world if you were maybe gay ("queer" and "pansy" is how Graham puts it, in this 1970 tome) or smoked dope or went on a booze bender or who was box-office poison because your movies ain't cuttin' it.

Graham spent many years at the Garden of Allah as either resident or visitor during Hollywood's golden mid-century, and thus the book jacket tells us: "Miss Graham is the person most qualified to write this book."

To which I say: "In theory, yes."

But first, the cast:

Fred Allen, Lauren Bacall, Tallulah Bankhead, Vilma Banky, John Barrymore, Richard Barthelmess, Albert Basserman, Robert Benchley, Irving Berlin, Betty Blythe, Humphrey Bogart, Clara Bow, Louise Brooks, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Frances X. Bushman, Charles Butterworth, Louis Calhern, John Carradine, Johnny Carson, Ruth Chatterton, Mickey Cohen, Claudette Colbert, Ronald Colman, Marc Connelly, Gary Cooper, Joan Crawford, Jean Dalrymple, Lili Damita, Vic Damone, Marion Davies, Jack Dempsey, Florence Desmond, Marlene Dietrich, Mischa Elman, Mia Farrow, John Farrow, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Errol Flynn, Gene Fowler, Greta Garbo, Ava Gardner, Janet Gaynor and Charlie Farrell, W.C. Fields, Clark Gable, John Garfield, John Gilbert, Dorothy Gish, Jackie Gleason, Jimmy Gleason, Elinor Glyn, Sam Goldwyn, Benny Goodman, Frances Goodrich, Ruth Gordon, Sheilah Graham, Cary Grant, D.W. Griffith, Albert Hackett, Jon Hall, Oscar Hammerstein, Dashiell Hammett, Jed Harris, Jascha Heifetz, Lillian Hellman, Ernest Hemingway, Woody Herman, Katharine Hepburn, Leslie Howard, Garson Kanin, George S. Kaufman, Buster Keaton, Muriel King, Eartha Kitt, Alexander Korda, Rod La Roque, Elsa Lanchester, Ring Lardner Jr., Charles Laughton, Frank Lawton, Lila Lee, Beatrice Lillie, John Loder, Anita Louise, Bessie Love, Edmund Lowe, Ernst Lubitsch, Charles MacArthur, Fredric March, Frances Marion, Harpo Marx, Zeppo Marx, Groucho Marx, Sam Marx, Glesca Marshall, Somerset Maugham, Leo McCarey, Patty McCormack, Robert Montgomery, Ward Morehouse, Nita Naldi, Pola Negri, Ramon Novarro, Alla Nazimova, David Niven, Ramon Novarro, John O'Hara, Maureen O'Hara, Walter O'Keefe, Maureen O'Sullivan, Clifford Odets, Laurence Olivier, George Oppenheimer, Dorothy Parker, Anna Pavlova, Johnny Roselli, S.J. Perelman, William Powell, Tyrone Power, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ronald Reagan, Flora Robson, Ginger Rogers, Gilbert Roland, Ruth Roman, Harry Ruby, Leon Shamroy, Artie Shaw, Arthur Sheekman, Robert E. Sherwood, Frank Sinatra, Red Skelton, Everett Sloane, Barbara Stanwyck, John Steinbeck, Donald Ogden Stewart, Leopold Stokowski, Igor Stravinsky, Gloria Stuart, Margaret Sullavan, Gloria Swanson, Constance and Norma Talmadge, Lilyan Tashman, Kay Thompson, Franchot Tone, Spencer Tracy, Forrest Tucker, Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Vanderbilt, Conrad Veidt, H.B. Warner, Johnny Weissmuller, Orson Welles, Betty White, Paul Whiteman, Dame May Whitty, Herbert Wilcox, Billy Wilder, Hope Williams, Jock Whitney, Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, P.G. Wodehouse, Alexander Woollcott, Vincent Youmans, Darryl Zanuck.

Now ... I know who the hell all these people are; some of you neophytes may not, so for me there is inherent interest in the doings of such a concentration of Hollywood talent in one place. Yet, somehow, the book comes off often as dull, uninteresting, tedious, repetitive, shallow, etc. The reason may be more complicated than merely Graham's shoddy newspaper-gossip-style writing and wack sense of narrative organization, and may lie in what we want in a Hollywood story. Do we want an account that poeticizes and mythologizes the people and their doings at the hotel, or do we want a warts-and-all-account of how boring and banal these so-called legends actually might have been? Strangely, Sheilah Graham gives us a portrait of people who were, as she presents them, pretty ordinary and banal, but pretends as if these anecdotes about them are oh-so scintillating and worthy of the patina of legend. Someone dunks someone in a pool, someone cheats someone at cards, someone drunkenly wraps their car around a tree, ad infinitum. Isn't it all so splendid?

I wasn't buying it very much, and kinda wanted something more on the order of F. Scott FItzgerald, who saw magic and beauty in everything. Fitzgerald, as it happens, is a main character in this book, being a famous resident of the Garden of Allah and lover of Graham. He likely succeeded at capturing some of the Hollywood flavor Graham is lacking in his unfinished novella, The Last Tycoon, written at the Garden, and including a character based on Graham herself. Fitzgerald, like many others here, was pretty much a total shit, binging alcohol and hurting others, but Graham wants us to think him the bees' knees. She dumped some English Lord for him, then married a millionaire after he croaked in 1940. She certainly was a clout chaser. She makes it known, frequently, how hot she was and how many dudes hit on her and how many hearts she broke.

The Garden of Allah hotel was founded by an odd character in show-biz history, Alla Nazimova, a Russian artiste -- actor, dancer, producer, writer -- whose mystique was not enough for her to make it in Hollywood. The hotel, built on the property of her home, was meant to give her an income. The hotel's title was a play on Nazimova's first name with the extra "h" added to riff on a popular campy play/movie title of the day. Immediately, the artistic community in town took to it, to the large pool, to the Spanish-style bungalows arrayed on hilly rises with their choice views, the fruit trees that didn't bear fruit, the neon sign that often fizzed out to read "The den of Allah." (which amused Tallulah Bankhead greatly, given some of the sinful activities therein).

Unfortunately for Nazimova, the place was a money loser, despite the high rents, and she had to sell out fairly quickly, thereafter taking residence in a villa for the rest of her life -- a solitary figure like a ghost in the compound, never speaking to anyone or being spoken to by the (apparently) easily frightened residents. One later visitor, noticing a dead mouse face up in the pool and an overall shabby vibe, compared the place to the forlorn mansion in the famous Tinseltown downer, 1950's Sunset Blvd. David Lynch might have made a great film about this, alas.

The place, in theory, should have been a heaven on Earth, relatively quiet, bathed in shade from the flora and fauna, sporting a pool larger than most in Hollywood at the time, and, for some, it was. Writers went there to seek respite and to finish off scripts, errant spouses went there to consummate sexual assignations, stars seeking sanctuary went there to hide from the press, some permanent residents such as the witty writer Robert Benchley stayed to pursue a solitary drunken existence. As a fan of New York's famous Algonquin Round Table of writers, I found it interesting that members of the Table -- Benchley, Dorothy Parker, and Alexander Woollcott -- all stayed there, making it a sort of Algonquin West. But by this time, the Table members were old, bitter washouts, resentful over what they saw as failed careers. None of them, even the ostensibly kind and generous Benchley, come off well in this book.

The hotel was fashionable up until the end of World War II, but after that it went into quick decline, and like most things in the City of Angels where history, relevance and trends are impermanent, the place became yesterday's news. The food there was never good, the soup was watery and the bellboy, Ben, was some kind of con artist who stole shit from everyone's room and the residents just laughed it off. Just ole Ben being Ben.

Luckily on and in the vicinity of the Sunset Strip, decent venues were in walking distance: Mocambo, Ciro's, Trocadero, La Rue's, Player's Club, Chasen's, and, a little farther away, The Brown Derby and Romanoff's, the latter a favorite of sometime Garden residents Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. The famous Schwab's Drug Store was across the street, a place with greater myth cred than the Garden of Allah ever gained.

The book's essential narrative flow is: mention someone famous who stayed at the hotel, tell us highlights of his or her career and then provide an anecdote or two about some fairly mildy amusing thing they did at the hotel. Rinse and repeat. The book often goes so off the rails with Hollywood stories that have nothing to do with Garden of Allah, as if Graham had some of these tales itching to get off the index cards stored in her old musty shoebox.

I wrote down a few things as examples of star shenanigans: drunken John Barrymore falling into the pool; Charles Laughton cooling down in the pool in his Hunchback costume; Clara Bow fucking the old character actor James Gleason (I never imagined THEM together); Buster Keaton mooning over the androgynous Beatrice Lillie who was staying there; Tallulah Bankhead running stark naked around the pool (of course) after losing all her jewelry at the bottom; Johnny Weissmuller uncharacteristically diving into the pool fully clothed in evening wear; John Carradine reciting Shakespeare so loudly in his room that everyone in the compound could hear him and once trying to walk across the pool thinking he was Jesus, etc. Graham devotes an inordinate number of pages to the forgotten character actor, Charles Butterworth, who was there for years and was a total ass-bag and you just want him to go away.

These tales are all amusing enough, I suppose, to keep one going, but let's be real: the Garden of Allah was whatever you want it to be in the dreamscape of Hollywood. People claimed to feel safe there, in the artificial Eden, yet robberies were common, a desk clerk was brutally murdered, and a resident was sliced to death by a razor fetishist. Security by today's standards was shockingly lax; the compound could be entered at many points off the surrounding streets with no trouble, the front lobby completely bypassable. The place fell into disrepair and underwent a too-late renovation around 1954 before its demolition in 1959. The smartest guy in the book was the young actor, Denver Pyle, who took his last $300 and bought the hotel's cast-off old Spanish furniture and re-sold it all for $2,000.

The book lacks the rigor that has become standard in pop-cultural historical writing, and I wanted more of a sense of place that Graham is not great at providing; a more contextual poetic account of the hotel itself, as a character, in the zeitgeist of its special time and place in Golden Age Hollywood, and this just didn't cut it.

c. 2025 e/k

[Rama Rao · Rating 5 out of 5]

The closet of Garden of Allah revealed

This is the inside story of a playground, and a hideaway for Hollywood elite in the golden era. This was dreamt, and brought to reality by the 1920s screen goddess, Alla Nazimova. Author Sheilah Graham, a well respected newspaper columnist, also a resident at the sanctuary, gives us a first hand look at what went on inside and outside the walls. She discusses the residents, the players who hung out, the domestic issues of the celebrities, the movies they were making, and the studio business in a lucid manner. She observes that in its 32 years of its existence, the Garden witnessed despair, drunkenness, marriages & divorces, sex & orgies, fights, suicides, robberies and murders. Well known nightclubs such as; Mocambo, Ciro's, Trocadero, and of course the Schwab's Drugstore were very close to the Garden. Schwab's was handy for celebs; Arthur Miller use to stop by late nights for sleeping medications for Marilyn Monroe.

The Garden had notable intellectuals like, Somerset Maugham, Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, and Dorothy Parker. Leading men and women such as Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Rudolph Valentino, Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra, Spencer Tracy and Kathryn Hepburn were residents. The 25 bungalows built around a swimming pool followed very little traditional rules. The party started at night and go into wee hours, and sometimes much later. Barrymore had a valet carry his portable bar, Tallulah Bankhead use to whiz by the pool fully naked and announcing to the crowd about her nudity; the fist fight between Bogart and his wife Mayo Methot was common. Bogart had a bodyguard to protect him and Lauren Bacall from the tempestuously physical Mayo Methot; John Carradine was chased by his wife Sonja around the pool; and altercation between Errol Flynn and Pat Wymore, and many other types of spectacles were common occurrences.

The dirty laundry is not aired openly like many books about Hollywood scandals. The author uses her discretion in exposing the juicy stuff in a respectable feminine fashion. For example; when writer Eddie Chodorov came to Hollywood in 1932, Kay Francis was the queen at Warner Brothers. He went up to call his mother from a party downstairs, but had entered the wrong bedroom, Kay Francis's bedroom. He apologetically said, "I came to call my mom." "Do it for Christ sake," she said in a drunken voice with an empty bottle of brandy in her hand. Then she said "Come here, kid" and she pulled him into bed. Much later, he called his mother, and she asked how he liked Hollywood, he said in an excited tone, "VERY MUCH." The expression says it all, the magic he found at Garden. Rudolph Valentino met Nazimova at the Garden in its early days. She introduced him to Jean Acker with whom he fell in love and married; and later she introduced Natasha Rambova who became his second wife much to the displeasure of Nazimova even though she was confirmed lesbian; and so were Jean Acker and Natasha Rambova. Pola Negri, another friend of Nazimova seriously fell in love with Valentino; she felt like a schoolgirl having a crush on her male teacher.

Director Johnny Farrow, husband of Maureen O'Sullivan had a snake tattooed near his thigh and it appeared to be emerging from his manhood. He use to showoff in front of the ladies at the pool. He was the star at the Garden's swimming pool. Anita Louise, a blond and beautiful actress was a conversation piece at the Garden, and she use to swim in full makeup with every hair on her head in place.

When Mary Astor's personal diaries were published which described her trysts with writer George Kaufman, he moved to the Garden next door to Natalie Schafer, wife of actor Louis Calhern. He continued to show his prowess with Schafer when Calhern was away. The press followed wherever Kaufman went because the Astor's diaries were so hot.

Garden of Allah was heaven for folks who liked this life style. Whenever an "in" person of the crowd passed away at the Garden; there use to be a big party for the departed soul. For Bogart, the party lasted for three days, which indicates his popularity at the Garden.

[Ruth B · Rating 4 out of 5]

impressive: light, personal and historic. written
by f. scott fitzgerald's sweetheart about the
infamous bungalow apartment complex on sunset
blvd where they lived with dorothy parker, hemingway,
and many other...should be re-published.

[Alana Cash · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first couple of chapters are basically lists of actors who lived at the Garden of Allah and what movies they were making at the time. A bit interesting, but not so much. I was going to quit reading the book, but then i skipped to the chapter called "Scott" and read more about Graham's relationship with Scott Fitzegerald. I then read the chapters on Robert Benchley which included information about the writers for the New Yorker who headed to Hollywood for the money and hated the studio system and Hollywood.

I did finish reading the entire book and the lives of the people who lived there seemed sad, forlorn. Drinking heavily to force joy.

I wish the book had spent more time on the architecture. Saying a bungalow was at the back or by the pool just doesn't make me see it. How about a map with names of who lived where? I would have preferred many more pictures of the Garden of Allah, especially interiors, and fewer publicity shots from movies. The candid shots at parties were interesting.

But I suppose at the time this book was written, pre-Internet - meaning before every person's life was exposed for public scrutiny - people were interested in the stars and their lives, not knowing how terribly unhappy they were.

[Toni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I wouldn’t say Sheila Graham is a great writer, she does a great job of telling stories about the many interesting people who who stayed at this remarkable Hollywood hotel. Their partying was as legendary as their fame. If you’re interested in how the writers, directors and other stars of the Hollywood of the 20s-50s, you’d probably enjoy this book as much as I did.

[Cliff · Rating 4 out of 5]

A recent addition to my ever increasing library of titles related to Scott Fitz. :)

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great companion piece to the Chateau Marmont book.

[Mary · Rating 2 out of 5]

I may have read this book a long time ago because I remember the name, Garden of Allah and knew it was a hotel with bungalows in Hollywood. I also knew that famous writers from the east coast had lived there when they were writing for the movies. The book didn't seem very well organized. The first few chapters were little more than list of people who had lived there and who they were married to at the time. Later chapters were title one thing and covered something else.

I came away with a bad impression of almost everyone. I remember Robert Benchley as depicted in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle [movie] as a rather sweet man, but now I will think of him as a drunk. Ms. Graham does mention a biography of Benchley by his son Nat. Maybe I should try to get ahold of that.

[Rob Smith, Jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the humorous writers of the 1920s and 1930s. This book highlights a few of their adventures in Hollywood after leaving New York at the famous Garden of Allah. there's an entire section devoted to the late, great Robert Benchley. Graham also focuses on her Scot Fitzgerald. There are stories about Dorothy Parker, S.J. Perelman, David Niven, Harpo Marx, Humphrey Bogart, etc., etc., etc. The stories are well strung together and the saga is lovingly portrayed in one of the best ways I've ever read about the history of a single location.

This is a mighty rare book it seems and I'm glad to have found it. If you can find it, and you love Hollywood stories, this is a must read.

[Dianne Landry · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a fan of old movies and movie stars I really enjoyed this book. It lists like a who's who of early Hollywood, most of who at one time or another stayed at the Garden. It is really hard to believe the place stayed open for as long as it did but I'm glad it existed as it gave us some fascinating stories.

[Kathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Garden of Allah must have been quite a place, but The Garden of Allah is mostly catalogs of the residents and visitors (and bedmates) plus paragraphs of short, choppy sentences that go just about nowhere. I know Graham was a gossip columnist, but didn't she learn any creative writing skills along the way?

[Jinjer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one was really good too! Read it, in addition to Beloved Infidel, in preparation for a Last Days of F. Scott Fitzgerald walking tour in West Hollywood.

[maits · Rating 2 out of 5]

SUCH crazy Hollywood lore. Structurally terrible.

[Leila Kern · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I liked the book, the story did not seem organized. The author skipped from story to story without rhyme or reason. It was nice to read about the Garden of Allah which I have only read about, but I would have liked more information about the history of the place and why it was turned into a hotel.