Professor Emeritus Jim Mancuso of Albany, NY, within the last few months has moved to Hancock Park in Los Angeles to be close to his lovely daughter.
Jim lives just a few blocks from Perino's,
and gives us an update, that is followed by a brief retrospective
of the "elegant" postwar Hollywood, that preceded the "casual" Hollywood,
starting in the 60s.
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JIm Mancuso's Perino Report:
Roger Vincent in the L.A. Times gives us an update on the probable fate of the old, elegant Perino's restaurant site on Wilshire: apartments. In its day Perino's was perhaps the best in Los Angeles, and one of the most expensive. Its building was a much admired remodel by architect Paul Williams, of what had been a Thriftimart supermarket.
FOLLOW-UP: L.A. Observed also links to an L.A Times article on the fate of the long-closed, still legendary Perino's restaurant, which is to be torn down to be replaced by upscale apartments.
In its glory days, Perino's set the standard for sophistication and high style. For nearly four decades, it was a place where socialites lingered over chicken quenelles and steak Diane as violins played softly in the background. Celebrities of all stripes dined at Perino's: Eleanor Roosevelt, Cole Porter, Bugsy Siegel.
Surrounding them since 1949 was the epitome
of postwar decorating elegance, shades of pink and peach that architect
Wade Killefer called 'Rat Pack modern.' Indeed, Frank Sinatra and other
entertainers of that era fooled around on the Steinway grand piano in the
bar"
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PERINO'S
Another restaurant of the rich, the famous and the biz: closed but not forgotten. (gf)
When you arrive at Perino's at 3927 Wilshire Boulevard, the suave proprietor, Alex Perino is always there to greet you, and the house is staffed with the most quietly efficient corps of waiters we have seen in many a long day. Everything moves effortlessly, and seems to be on smoothly oiled wheels, like the wagons constantly being trundled past your booth. After the menu has been handed to you with all the eclat of a real occasion, a bus boy carelessly drops by with a wagon of fruit compote, beautifully colorful in its silver setting, and very, very tempting.
Nine people out of ten who have already ordered crabmeat or some other cocktail, change their minds on the spot, and fall for that, and all through the rest of the meal, keep a weather eye out for the dessert wagon. That faraway look in the eye of your vis a vis, usually means the agony of soul which comes from endeavoring to make a choice of the numerous deserts.
It will always remain a mystery what these Italian restaurants do to string beans. This is something which no housewife can hope to achieve. Such bright, green tender and delicious tasting morsels, make vitamin-conscious folks completely satisfied for once with their lot.
There is a soupcon of wine in the sauces, and traces of that "fine Italian hand" of a superchef throughout. The aroma of perfect coffee finishes a highly satisfactory experience.
Now that your hunger has been appeased, you will have time to sit back in the comfortable padded booth and observe all the details of the tastefully decorated room. It is essentially modern; only this time with a copper motif prevailing throughout, rather than the usual black and silver, and it's very striking, this effect.
The Continental luncheons, with their chafing
dishes glowing cozily on your table for the hot courses, and the numerous
salads temptingly displayed, are always a drawing card. These luncheons
are 75c per person, and dinners are $1.50. A good many social registerites
have made this place their rendezvous, and these people always know their
chives and shallots. It's certainly one of the outstanding places in town.
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RETURN FOR MORE LA IN THE 30's
Perino's. The establishment restaurant in Los Angeles - the place where Old Money meets, eats and makes more decisions on the future of the city than in City Hall, the mayor's mansion and all the smoke-filled rooms in town combined. Here the enormous menu is filled with such exquisite delicacies as fritto piccata and escargots bourguignonne and the wines sell for up to $2000 a bottle and the decor is all plush velvet banquettes, thick carpeting, damask drapes, floor-to-ceiling mirrors and cut-crystal chandeliers that glisten like stars on a desert night.
When Luther and Chandler ate hamburgers together at Perino's, which sat on Wilshire Boulevard in Hancock Park, they knew that upstairs the powerful interest group called the Committee of 25 was busy picking out the next mayor or governor.
Picture the extravagantly attired Marilyn
Monroe and Joe DiMaggio stepping into Perino's on Wilshire of an evening,
waving to Sinatra, Ava Gardner and a drunken Bogart sawing through a New
York Porterhouse. Back in the glory days of Hollywood, when the city's
most eminent socialites lived in the suburbs of Hancock Park rather than
the hills, places like Perino's on Wilshire and the Brown Derby gave eating
out an aristocratic edge.
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THE WAY WE WERE.(Los Angeles night
spots in the 1950s-'60s)
Los
Angeles Magazine, August, 1999, by Fred
Schruers
ONCE UPON A TIME, DINING, DANCING AND DRINKS WERE A NIGHTLY RITUAL AT DOZENS OF SMART SPOTS. AROUND TOWN. BEFORE THE CITY MOVED TO THE SUBURBS AND TRAFFIC STRANGLE THE FREEWAY, STARS REVELED IN HOLLYWOOD'S LAST GREAT ERA OF ELEGANCE
There's no sense crying over the great, vanished $10 steak dinner--the modern versions of the stars who once relished them today are almost certainly vegans.
And there's no sense crying over the maitre d's who knew how to whistle up a table for this month's new name--because they're actually still at work (at, say, the Ivy or Morton's), dismissing us ordinary folks to mill around the noisy bar for a half hour or so. But pause, if you will, --for the last gasp of the suave, star-studded Los Angeles restaurants and their kindred bars of the '50s.
If there's one unanimous sentiment among the veterans of the period, it's that we won't be seeing their likes again. So call the roll-- toward an elegy for long-gone glamour. And as the sport-utility vehicles rumble up and down Sunset Boulevard in search of take-out sushi and an NC-17 DVD, think kindly of the slowerpaced, meticulously groomed, fashionably dressed era of Eisenhower and Edsel, and, if you can, just whisper the word one more time--elegance.
After WWII, the restaurants and the studios were in happy symbiosis; On the theater marquees were names like Joan Crawford, Bette Davis Jane Wyman and Susan Hayward, and their male counterparts Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, Kirk Douglas, James Stewart and Spencer Tracy....
However, Los Angeles was one of the fastest-growing American cities in the '50s, which quietly and inevitably was consuming the great majority of those restaurants that once lent it a world of notoriety.As always with tales of the destructive side of "progress," the lingering death of the swank restaurant cannot be blamed on a single cause.
Other things noble (the art of assiduous public courtship, for example) and ignoble (conspicuous fawning over gangsters and studio chiefs) were lost in the wake, and its demise wasn't merely due to some lack of grace in the dining population.Though, God knows, that didn't help.
What emerges from the gracious group who spoke with us is a sense that they ate much better on their trips to Manhattan, San Francisco, Paris or Venice than they ever could in even the best of local restaurants; but across the linen tablecloths, surrounded by the indoor palm trees, they enjoyed a bonhomie with their peers that was unmatched anywhere.
"They used to call the Brown Derby
on Vine Street the commissary for Hollywood,"
"One week you would go to the Derby and
the next week you would go to Chasen's; you'd see pretty much the
same people. Everybody in the industry that liked good food and seeing
friends went to Chasen's.
Musso & Frank, which opened in 1919 on Hollywood Boulevard near Vine and is the city's greatest survivor. Legends F. Scott Fitzgerald drank in the back room, Chaplin holding court in front, possibly with one eye on, say, Groucho Marx.
You wouldn't find Frank Sinatra there--he'd be a couple blocks away at the Villa Capri, or at Dino's Lodge, owned by fellow Rat Packer Dean Martin. In those days, the choices for Italian fare were slim--chiefly Villa Nova in Hollywood or Joe's Little Italy downtown.
The byword for what passed for haute cuisine in the '50s was "Continental"--lobster Newburg with melba toast, braised sweetbreads a la Bourgignonne, fillet of sand dabs saute meuniere (Jimmy Stewart's favorite) and, for dessert, baked Alaska and a pot of Postum.For true gourmets, recalls socialite Betsy Bloomingdale, "Los Angeles was not a great restaurant town."
In fact, says Charles Champlin, "One of the few restaurants that was absolutely known first and foremost for its food was Scandia." Opened on Sunset close to the Beverly Hills border by a chef from the well-loved Bit of Sweden.
But the town's most elegant restaurant was Perino's, according to Bloomingdale: "I was always thrilled that my first plate of spaghetti bolognese was as a little girl, when my aunt took me to the old Perino's in its rather grand building on Wilshire Boulevard." The entryway framed, by stylish art deco letters spelling the restaurant's name showed the same restraint as the half-lit, quiet interior that made it a favorite for romantic dinners and private conversations, versions. It was said, recalls Luther, "that every governor and mayor of this city was elected upstairs in Perino's.
"Billy Wilders wife, Audrey remembers "one party given at Perino's by George Stevens, just for directors and their wives,--our great friend David Lean was there, Frank Capra, George, Billy, Willie Wyler, John Huston. All top guys. But Frank Capra was the cutest little guy, the Godfather--he had a voice like that--short, and very cute, and a hoot." The group was all very sportsmanlike, she says, "but in those days, it was mano a mano competition. You were up against your friends every year."
The Wilders would make special trips for the Italian fare at La Rue, opposite what is now Sunset Plaza. Though it bore a French name, says Mrs. Wilder, "the chefs came from the Italian Pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair. I remember seeing Bugsy Siegel, just having dinner, a very good-looking guy and nattily dressed, as all racketeers are." Despite the amount of testosterone in a typical roomful of stars, agents, studio bosses and gangsters, there would be only "the occasional brawl--like Errol Flynn or somebody. But, the manners were good, and they all looked wonderful, of course."
Romanoff's took its name from the beloved if hucksterish "Prince" or "Emperor," Mike Romanoff. He claimed descent from the czar--"Probably not true, but who cared?". The place on Rodeo Drive sported orange, green and yellow wallpaper. His co-investors, Cary Grant and Darryl Zanuck, ruled over seven prize banquettes near the entrance as a steady parade of film notables, headed by regular Humphrey Bogart, trailed through. Romanoff usually dined alone, attended by his bulldogs Socrates and Confucius, whose plates shared space at his table.
At the Mocambo on Sunset, the likes of Judy Garland, Lana Turner, Lucille Ball, Cary Grant and Henry Fonda could be found there at various times, among a living aviary of parakeets, macaws and a cockatoo. Along with the Trocadero, just down the block, and a host of exotic restaurants, the Mocambo led what was called "the avalanche of bamboo"--a postwar explosion of Hawaiian- and Polynesian-themed places that capitalized on Hollywood's fascination with Hawaii and farther-flung Pacific destinations.
The Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire had its own outpost of palms, the Cocoanut Grove. The Moroccan decor was set off by plenty of gold leaf, etched-palm-tree doors, a wide staircase and stuffed monkeys. The atmosphere must have lent itself to the grand gesture. At a party thrown for Gene Kelly after a film premiere, Debbie Reynolds leaped out of a cake--in a flapper costume.
One index to the not-so-gradual decline of the city's elegant nightlife is the Sunset Boulevard spot called Ciro's (now occupied by the Comedy Store). Founded by Hollywood Reporter owner Billy Wilkerson (he also started the Trocadero and the Clover Club). "The legend is that after a big premiere, a star's social position for the year is determined by his table at Ciro's,""Frankly, the legend is true."
Los
Angeles Magazine: THE WAY WE WERE.
(Los
Angeles night spots in the late 1950s-'60s)
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/
m1346/8_44/55241309/p7/article.jhtml?term=