After the underwhelming number pulled on the Hotel Bel Air last year, and the removal of the BH Hotel tennis courts the year before that, we aren’t terribly optimistic about ideas coming from the Dorchester camp. The New York Times now reports that the Polo Lounge is next to get a face-lift. Here is what interior designer Adam Tihany, hired for the job, will do:
- ‘The lighting is awful — we’ll change all that.’
- New carpeting is on the way.
- Updated upholstery for the booths, ‘perhaps in a slightly different shade’.
- We will “maintain the shabby-glamorous feel” of the Polo Lounge.
Here is what he will NOT do:
- ‘Add rhinestones to the piano.’
- ‘Put down white shag carpeting.’
- Banana-leaf wallpaper will be left intact.
- Signature white and green stripes are protected.
- The hunter green walls will stay.
A long list of power players and BHH royalty are quoted throughout the article expressing alarm or support of the sacred bar’s potential fate.
Hilarious references are made to several other restaurants throughout the article … they call:
- Nate ’n Al’s is a ‘dumpy diner.’
- Chateau Marmont has ‘out-to-lunch servers and a ho-hum menu.’
- Le Dome closed after heavyweight music clientele ‘recoiled from their an ill-advised renovation’.
- The Hotel Bel-Air had ‘bad plastic surgery.’
The renovation of the Polo Lounge will be completed in stages starting in January so it can remain open.
Hollywood’s elite at the Polo Lounge by LeRoy Neiman: Near Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable sits a sly W.C. Fields, and, yes, he is holding his menu upside down. Famed gossip columnist Hedda Hopper is perched within earshot of Bogie and Bacall, who seem to be keeping an eye on Katherine Hepburn and John Huston. Elizabeth Taylor, regal and bejeweled, enjoys a quiet cup of coffee. Frank and Barbara Sinatra are making their entrance, perhaps to join Frank’s fellow “Rat Pack” buddies Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr., who have already arrived. Star-makers Darryl F. Zanuck and Howard Hughes are here, as are Johnny Carson and Joan collins from the world of television. Film greats Gary Cooper, Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo all help lend a magical air to this glittering assemblage.
Adam D. Tihany
TOP: Rat Pack buddies Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr., Frank and Barbara Sinatra, BOTTOM: Clark Gable, W.C. Fields, Marilyn Monroe, Katherine Hepburn, Howard Hughes, Darryl F. Zanuck. AT THE BAR: Johnny Carson, Gary Cooper, Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Marlene Dietrich.
FRONT ROW: Hedda Hopper, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Huston, Elizabeth Taylor. SEATED BEHIND: Greta Garbo, Joan Collins,
