Are the Stars Out Tonight?: The Story of the Famous Ambassador and Coconut Grove.Hollywood's Hotel

Out-of-Print original 1980 edition~

ARE THE STARS OUT TONIGHT
“Hollywood’s Greatest Star Gone But Not Forgotten.

The title is based on all of the stars who assembled at the Ambassador Hotel and Cocoanut Grove for seven decades to entertain and be entertained.

Stories include the Cocoanut Grove, the early Academy Awards where Oscar got its name, the original Golden Globes, numerous award, fashion shows, and film premiers where guests and stars thrilled to the excitement and camaraderie of those early times.

For actors, being discovered at The Grove was their step to fame. Guests were entertained by every renowned orchestra and entertainer, such as Abe Lyman, Gus Arnheim, Guy Lombardo, Paul Whiteman, Phil Harris, Harry James, Sammy Davis, featuring Ella, Bing, Lena Horne, Nat King Cole, Merv Griffin and hundreds of other headliners. They mingled with Howard Hughes, Tilden, Einstein, the Kennedys, Winchell and hundreds of other greats. Entertainers and musicians playing the Cocoanut Grove, the greatest showplace west of New York, knew they had arrived. Swimming, tennis, golf, horse shows and tournaments made the hotel a major sports capitol.

Attending Stars Night were the film industry, major producers, writers and directors, and stars Garbo, Dietrich, Barrymore, Shearer, Crawford, Bette Davis, Gable. Later when the hotel served as a location for film-making, guests were thrilled to watch their favorite actors at work. We watched Marylin Monroe winning a swim competition, several Miss Universes and other beauties crowned… and being discovered.

Films and television include: The Graduate, Pretty Woman, Marrying Man, The Baker Boys, Dallas, Cheers, Forrest Gump, Minority Report, Quantum Leap, The West Wing, The Practice, etc. featuring stars such as: Dustin Hoffman, Tom Cruise, Adam Sandler, Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz, Kim Bassinger, Jamie Lee Curtis and Julia Roberts.

Round Table West was one of the largest and most successful book and author programs in the country. Inspired by New York's legendary Algonquin Round Table of the 1920s, Co-founders Margaret Burk, Adela Rogers St. Johns and Marylin Hudson began staging elaborate luncheons in a ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in 1977. Round Table West was a lively and sophisticated affair, blending Pulitzer Prize winners, first-time authors and venerable Hollywood stars at thrice-monthly meetings held at elegant venues, from the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Newport Beach's Balboa Bay Club to La Quinta Resort. The audiences regularly numbered in the low- to mid-hundreds. The monthly luncheons in all three places somehow managed to be both sophisticated and ribald, part salon, part vaudeville but always passionate celebrations of books and their authors. A Round Table meeting included not only an elegant meal and entertaining introductions by Mistress of ceremonies Margaret Burk, one of Hudson s hilariously deadpan astrological forecasts ( You Were Born Under a Funny Sign ), but Maya Angelou reading her poetry, or TV news icon Walter Cronkite talking about his love of sailing, or Zsa Zsa Gabor dishing about Hollywood and quipping I was Miss Hungary 110 years ago, or some then-unknown Orange County novelist such T. Jefferson Parker earnestly trying to sell a few copies of his first book all linked by the rat-a-tat-tat of some killer Viagra jokes. Marylin Hudson passed away August 2010 she was 76. Margaret Burk was the author of Are the stars out Tonight and Final Curtain. She passed away on October 13, 2011 at the age of 93.