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“The trail may be cold, but the stories are hot!”

By ivi blog Guest Contributor Dr. Rob Moore

Part 2 of a series of 2 posts.
As you will recall from the Garden of Allah Part One, the Garden was an estate originally owned by Alla Nazimova, the famed actress who starred opposite Rudolph Valentino in Cammille. In 1927 the Garden was opened as a hotel consisting of the main house with a bar, restaurant, and rooms for rent on the second floor which no one wanted because they were dark and depressing.

There were also 25 bungalows with paper thin walls at the back of the property, with tiny kitchens and the fury that one would expect with all 25 structures occupied by unstable, top-drawer actors, writers, directors and therapists. The names of the people in the bungalows are the names of some of the most famous people the world has ever produced, including Greta Garbo, Humphrey Bogart, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, George Kauffman, Errol Flynn, and Dorothy Parker.

However, there was one celebrity at the Garden, one person who had the confidence of every other; the one that no one at the Garden dared upset.

There was a person of such status that even such personalities as Hemingway and Parker gave way in his presence.

That person was named Ben. Ben the Bellboy. (See rare photo of Ben, center, at the Ritz with Hemingway in later years.)

Managers may have  arrived and departed the Garden in revolving-door fashion. Owners, chefs, bartenders, maids, gardeners, the same.

However, Ben the Bellboy was a mainstay, the support without whom the Garden of Allah and all it became in terms of a colony of volcanic misfits could not have evolved.

Ben was a relatively short, stout fellow, blondish hair, outgoing personality, and a logistics genius; a perfect fit for that particular place and time.

When he left the Garden, as the curtain began to drop on the place in the 50s, it was not necessary for Ben to ever work again. He had amassed a comfortable fortune gazing at and grazing on those personalities that the rest of us only viewed as stars in a distant firmament; stars with uncommon needs and appetites; needs and appetites Ben the Bellboy was only too happy to satisfy.

This is the story of Ben, as far as we know it. There are, we are confident, oddities, not to say horrors, that both rumor and written history do not reveal.  However, what we do know is sufficient to write an odyssey not to be outdone by any mortal either before or since.

Ben was just a phone call away for those he liked, which was just about anyone he could make money serving.  But, it was the wise occupant of the Garden who didn’t attempt to deceive Ben. For until Ben wished to serve a tenant, that tenant was forced to depend on the “official” services of the Garden which were far and away inferior to those available through this resplendent bellboy.

Ben ran several businesses of his own having nothing to do with the Garden, including laundry, car (limousine rental agency), florist, caterer, substance vendor (which bankrupted the Garden bar), “companion” service, postman, private security purveyor, counselor, and emergency control handyman. Once an actor, actress, writer, director or therapist was accepted under Ben’s wing, even in the Hollywood of that day, which was capable of amassing hundreds of hungry reporters rather than the dozens of paparazzi as today at a moment’s notice,  the studio approved images of Ben’s “clients” were much less vulnerable to attack.

Ben also delivered the mail to all bungalow residents.  Ben’s reputation grew as a prophet. This was so because Ben often stopped to chat with residents who were home at the time of each day’s delivery.  As an example of one of these visits, Ben would place the mail of the recipient on the small kitchen counter and begin to point to each piece individually, let’s say addressed to  Mr. Errol Flynn.  Ben would say to Mr.
Flynn, “Mr. Flynn, You don’t want that one or that. That one is OK.”

Ben was always straightforward with the occupants of the bungalows in terms of his expectations.  Ben was there to serve and to make a profit, not necessarily in that order.

When someone called him and asked that he obtain a “goodie” or provide a special service, Ben would quote the price. The price would include a hefty personal fee. For example, whether it be a case of whiskey or a box of band aids, Ben would walk to Schwab’s drug store a block away, and carry the items back. He never used a vehicle for these jaunts. If it was in the middle of the night, as was often the case, Ben always delivered.  If the occupant of a bungalow was away and Ben knew (he always knew) that a requested item was to be found in the temporarily unoccupied suite, he would steal what was needed and replace it before the occupant returned (at least that was the plan).

Ben could always be counted upon to produce instant buffets for parties. He would deliver sandwiches perched precariously on trays that he held above his head as he swerved in and out of the pathways between bungalows on a bicycle. Ben enjoyed the bicycle as a source of exercise to keep his boyish waist. The trim waist was one of the only goals attempted by Ben during his Garden tenure that he failed spectacularly to achieve.

Ben was also available in any kind of emergency. For example, one evening, Tallulah Bankhead (photo), dressed in full evening wear, loaded down with glass and metal, cape and an equal weight of designer make-up, fell into the huge Black Sea shaped swimming pool at the Garden. Tallulah, who couldn’t swim well, became a frenzied spectacle as she was seen struggling at the bottom of the pool by several swash buckling lead actors. None of the film stars left their perches to assist the actress.  Tallulah, finally gathering her wits about her, if not her clothing, disrobed at the bottom of the pool, and proceeded to float to the surface stark naked. Shock taking command once again, Tallulah exploded from the pool and began running round and round the rim naked, to everyone’s delight. Ben, hearing the commotion, grabbed a large blanket and started in pursuit. Finally, Ben had to solicit the help of a friend who was staying on the second floor of the estate. Together they trapped Tallulah, draped her over Ben’s shoulder and returned her to her bungalow.

The near drowning had only a temporary (excuse) dampening affect on Miss Bankhead’s plans. Ninety minutes after the incident, having donned another evening costume, and perhaps a pound or two more metal adornments than before, off Tallulah went to the nearby Players Club. Ben was left to retrieve the first round of items from the “great waters” of the West, as the Garden’s pool was known.

In addition to Ben being a private front for several businesses, he also sadly had little or no respect for the sacrament of marriage. In the absence of an actress or actor on location, with spouse abandoned at the Garden, Ben was available to arrange, at any time, a private encounter with another person of the preferred sex “…for therapy, all in the name of mental health, mind you. Loneliness is a destroyer,” Ben would often say.

In closing for now, let us share that Ben loved to quote the work of his charges at the Garden. Ben was an extremely literate man of the world. One of Ben’s favorite psalm-like chants sung while fulfilling the role of substance vendor was written by  Dorothy Parker…”But I’d rather have a bottle in front of me, Than have to have a frontal lobotomy.” After voicing such a philosophy, Ben would sigh in a way only Ben could manage, and say, “Dottie is not terribly well  you know.” The world at large had no idea.