From under my hat (1952)

12 Until I could get settled, I had left Bill in a boarding school back East. I went to live at the Hollywood Hotel and soon knew that, with the prospect of long hours at hard work, I couldn't give my son the personal attention and companionship a boy should have. Finally, however, I was able to make a plan for him that I thought was a good one. He would go to the Black-Foxe Military School, right in Los Angeles, near enough for me to see him often, yet surrounded by an atmosphere of orderliness and good training. A friend of mine, Peg LaVino, brought him out for me and I entered him in school. The Hollywood Hotel was an old rattrap of a building at the comer of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, but it was the best we had in the early twenties. On the land where the swank Bel Air Hotel stands today was a stable. The Beverly Hills Hotel was just where it is now, but it was no better than the Hollywood and miles from the heart of our activities, which were centered around Hollywood and Vine. Among the famous people who lived at the old Hollywood Hotel was Elinor Glyn— the sister of Lady DuffGordon— fairly well known in her own right after she wrote Three Weeks and sold it to the movies. But Elinor became famous when she named Clara Bow the "It" girl. Also, important New York actors Bert Lytell and Tully Marshall lived at the Hollywood, as well as Laura Hope Crews, Bessie Love, and Rupert Hughes. The Thursday night dances at the hotel were almost as famous as those at the old Sixty Club in New York. People came from all over town to watch the actors do their stuff. The hotel was owned by a maiden lady named Hershey, a member of the chocolate family. She ran things in a haphazard manner, and it was years before she caught onto the fact that actors sometimes will enter actresses' 138