The Monkey Bar
The Elysée is known for the Monkey Bar, a piano bar just off the lobby. Opened in the depths of the Great Depression, it became known to the cognoscenti as "the place to go where jokes die," especially off-color jokes and double-entendre songs spun by such performers as Johnny Payne (1934-1964), Marion Page (1950-1965) and Mel Martin (1945-1983). Johnny Andrews played the piano at cocktail hour for over 50 years (1936-1990).
Starting out as just another dimly lit hotel piano bar with mirrored paneling, the tiny room was expanded in the early 1950s when the mirrors were replaced by wraparound hand-painted mural by caricaturist Charlie Wala. The mural depicts monkeys with decidedly human features riding elephants, crouching under a Christmas tree, mixing up banana daiquiris for tough-looking monkey-like customers, etc. In successive years, other artists have added to the tableau.
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Famous quotes containing the words monkey and/or bar:
“Do you know who’s sneaked into my stateroom at three o’clock this morning? Nobody, and that’s my complaint!”
—S.J. Perelman, U.S. screenwriter, Arthur Sheekman, Will Johnstone, and Norman Z. McLeod. Groucho Marx, Monkey Business, a complaint shipboard stowaway Groucho makes to the ship’s captain (Ben Taggart)
“Think ... before the words—the vows are spoken, which put yet another terrible bar between us.... I call upon you in the name of God ... to be sincere with me—Can you, my Annie, bear to think I am another’s?”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)