Palm Court (Alexandria Hotel) - Notable Events From The Palm Court's Heyday

Notable Events From The Palm Court's Heyday

From 1911 to 1923, the Alexandria ballroom (now known as the Palm Court) was the site of many of the city's most important gatherings. The following list identifies some of the notable events associated with the room.
1911

• October 1911 – U.S. President William Howard Taft delivered a speech on international peace at a banquet at the Alexandria Hotel. Taft noted that it is always "the wrong men" who are killed in war. He said that the rulers, legislators, diplomats and bureau chiefs sleep in safety while the soldiers who usually "have not the least idea of what the war is about shoot at each other on the battlefield." Taft advocated the creation of a court of nations to decide disputes between countries and suggested that "there should be no armies or navies except the army and navy of the allied powers which would enforce the decree of the court." The Los Angeles Times called the speech "masterful and statesmanlike in every sense of the word."

1912

• February 1912 – The city's leaders gathered at the Alexandria for an elaborate banquet in honor of the 75th birthday of Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, editor in chief and general manager of the Los Angeles Times.
• December 1912 - The city's first subscription ball since 1910 was held at the Alexandria, and the Los Angeles Times reported: "The social season of 1912-13 had its opening and it apotheosis last night in the ballroom of the Alexandria."

1913

• February 1913 - At a Mardi Gras costume ball, the Alexandria ballroom was decorated with "clownish faces of elfs of mischief" grinning down from every angle, and a girt with hundreds of small yellow bulbs, "each light covered with a grotesque masque", all presenting "a scene of ghostly enchantment" and casting "a halo of unreality." The Times described the following scene on the dance floor: "Serpentines glided in and out among the throng; someone started the Tango dance, a weird conception of rhythm and action which came all the way from Argentina and which offers something entirely new."

1915

• May 1915 – A.C. Bilicke, the Los Angeles millionaire who built the Alexandria and was president of the Alexandria Hotel Company, died while a passenger on the Cunard liner Lusitania, which was sunk by a German torpedo off the coast of Ireland.
• June 1915 - The Photoplayers Ball at the Alexandria ballroom was described by the Los Angeles Times as the "most brilliant entertainment which the photoplayers of Los Angeles have ever given." The dance was held in the ballroom and on the mezzanine with punch being served in the adjoining anterooms. Dinner was served at midnight in the grill. The event was enlivened by "brilliant little impromptu contributions in the way of witty speeches, songs and recitations" by actors, including Raymond Hitchcock, Tom Meighan and Carlyle Blackwell. Jesse Lasky made a speech on the future of motion pictures, and the other guests included Mary Pickford, Dorothy Gish, Francis X. Bushman, George Damerel, Billie West, Charles Clary, Herbert Rawlinson, Samuel Goldfish (later known as Samuel Goldwyn), Emma Carus, Myrtle Vail, Edmund Lowe, Mary Alden, Charles Winninger, Blanche Ring, Walter Catlett, Kathlyn Williams, Anita King, Fay Tincher, Bessie Barriscale, Augusta Anderson, Charlotte Walker, Marjorie Rambeau, Camille Astor, Anna Little, Cleo Madison, Blanche Ring, Florence Dagmar and Bennison.
• September 1915 – In "one of the pleasantest social events of the motion-picture world", a dinner was given honoring dancer Anna Pavlova. Mack Sennett gave a speech at the dinner. Following the dinner, Mlle. Pavlova "graciously consented to do her celebrated 'Glow Worm Dance.'"
• December 1915 – A convention of the Produce Exchange was entertained by barefoot and Oriental dancers and whirling dervishes, and a complete cabaret show hosted by Irish comedian Harry Coleman. The Los Angeles Times reported, "Joy reigned supreme" at the banquet, as more than 250 guests gathered in the ballroom and "the fun was uninterrupted until the small hours of the morning."

1916

• February 1916 - Plans were announced to construct the Pacific Coast's first indoor ice skating rink in the Alexandria ballroom. Plans called for refrigeration coils to be placed at the bottom of an oval tank.
• March 1916 – At a spirited luncheon at the Alexandria attended by more than 100 prominent businessmen, the California Prosperity League launched its campaign against prohibition in California. The group advocated a vigorous campaign against the forces advocating the destruction of one of California's most valuable industries – the vineyards and wine manufacturers. Charles F. Lummis spoke and suggested that the Prosperity League also be known as the Sanity and Freedom League.
• December 1916 – The Cherry Blossom Players from Japan opened a month-long engagement at the Alexandria offering a production that included "Samurai, symbolic and humorous interpretive dances, folk songs with koto, samisen and shaquahachi music and several one-act plays mimed in the Japanese classic manner."

1918

• March 1918 - After the Alexandria's chef, C.B. Nagel, made unspecified comments at a Red Cross Society midnight frolic that were perceived by some to reflect disloyalty, a Department of Justice special agent lodged a complaint with the hotel's manager. Nagel, one of the most noted chefs on the Pacific Coast, was forced to resign. The hotel's manager said, "Mr. Nagel is a good man in his line, but it is impossible for the hotel to keep in its employ anyone whose loyalty is challenged. Mr. Nagel is a German and the war situation had become decidedly tense."
• April 1918 – The lower floors of the hotel, mezzanine, lobby and ballroom were turned over for celebration of Women's Liberty Loan Day. Several thousand "patriotic women of Los Angeles" participated in the rally. Actress Marie Dressler gave a speech in the ballroom boosting Liberty Bonds.
• April 1918 - Japanese Vice-Admiral Kantarō Suzuki was honored at a banquet. Suzuki pledged the friendship and goodwill of the Japanese people to the United States and noted, "No yellow peril ever had its origin in Japan." Suzuki was opposed to Japan's war with the United States, before and throughout World War II. He was the Japanese Prime Minister at the time of its surrender at the end of World War II.
• July 1918 - A Submarine Base gala to benefit sailors was held at the Alexandria featuring entertainment by Charlie Chaplin, Lillian Gish, Fannie Ward, Bert Guterman, Juanita Hansen, Fritzi Brunette, and Mary Miles Minter.
• August 1918 - The Stage Women's War Relief held an auction of kisses at the Alexandria ballroom to benefit soldiers and sailors and their families. The Los Angeles Times reported that "100 beautiful young picture actresses have consented to auction off their kisses at the benefit." Billie Mason and Wallace Reid were the auctioneers and referees at the event that also included dancing, music and vaudeville entertainment. The program included Belle Bennett, Wilbur Higby, and Jane Novak. Soldiers and sailors received their kisses free of charge.
• December 1918 - Initiating a nine-day fundraising drive, Douglas Fairbanks was the star speaker at pep rally for Liberty Bond salesmen at the Alexandria ballroom. Fairbanks rode an elephant to the rally as part of a "patriotic parade" through downtown Los Angeles.

1919

• September 1919 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson spoke to a crowd of 515 diners at the Alexandria. Wilson entered the ballroom through an arch of grape vines, and "tiny electric bulbs gave the effect of glowworms in a garden." The dining room was a mass of flowers with the walls banked with great yellow chrysanthemums relieved by masses of trailing ferns. The President's table, at the eastern end of the room, had a fountain centerpiece surrounded by banks of California fruits, and 50 varieties of roses strewn the length of the table. When Wilson spoke in favor of the League of Nations, there was a hush as the President paused, and then applause came. The Los Angeles Times reported that the dinner presented a brilliant picture of the city's social and business leaders with the women dressed in beautiful gowns for the opening of the fall social season.
• November 1919 - The Alexandria hosted Hollywood's Thanksgiving ball, called "the great impeccable occasion of the year in Filmand." With Prohibition set to commence the in January 1920, the punchbowls were one of the biggest attractions. The Los Angeles Times reported:

  "It got rumored around late in the evening that nearly a whole cup of claret, first and last, had been poured into one of the punch-bowls and there was quite a rush. ... Somebody also started the story that there was a mysterious room somewhere, and that all of a half pint of beer and nearly a whole bottle of perfume had been consumed, but the scandal was not verified, and I for one don't believe it, because if anything like that were on tap, Director Walter Edwards would have been on it, and he would have danced, whereas he never shook a hoof all evening."

  Bebe Daniels was "clothed in that siren shade of Viennese red and vamped whenever mommer Phyllis Daniels wasn't looking." Mary Miles Minter arrived at midnight in a tall blue limousine. Charlie Chaplin came and "peeped rather gloomily in, but he saw so many vulgar, curious newspaper people about that he hastily withdrew."
• December 1919 - Paul Whiteman, who would become known as the Jazz King, got his start as a bandleader, opening at the Alexandria and playing as the house band for the next six months. Whiteman performed dance and dinner music for "the elite of moviedom" before moving to the East Coast. Whiteman later recalled that he first seriously attracted attention of dancers while playing with his nine-man orchestra at the Alexandria. Bandleader Ray A. West, with whose band Bing Crosby was discovered, followed Whiteman as the bandleader at the Alexandria.

1920

• January 1920 – A crowd of 500 welcomed Gen John J. Pershing, leader of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I. Speeches were given "of 100 per cent Americanism" and condemning the menaces of internationalists, isolationists, anarchists, and profiteers. Pershing noted that ignorance had caused the fall of Russia and advocated requiring every foreigner to learn to read and write or be shipped back to "the foul nest from which they came." Pershing's trip also included a parade down Broadway that included African-American troops from the Rainbow Division.
• April 1920 - The Alexandria lobby was the scene of a post-dinner "knockdown and drag out fight" between Charlie Chaplin and Louis Mayer. Chaplin had recently separated from his wife, and when asked what caused the fight said, "Ask Mayer -- and ask my wife; they can tell you."
• May 1920 – At a Chamber of Commerce dinner, speakers predicted that Los Angeles would soon surpass Chicago as American's second largest city and become the gateway to the Orient and "the center of the world."
• December 1920 - The entrance to the Alexandria ballroom was decorated as a reproduction of the Dead Rat Cafe in Paris for a "Christmas in Paris" ball. The event included a fashion show with movie actresses, including Marjorie Daw, Colleen Moore, Clara Horton, Karla Schramm, and Sylvia Brooke, serving as models.

1921

• July 1921 – Film producer J.H. Goldberg invited Mayor Cryer, the City Council, journalists and 250 movie exhibitors to a preview of his new 30-reel feature, The Miracles of the Jungle. To secure the proper atmosphere for the film, dealing with "animals and the trials of a few white people in the heart of Africa," the ballroom was converted into a jungle scene with palms, tules, vines with cutouts of animals hidden in the foliage, and lithographs suspended from the ceiling depicting scenes from the story.
• August 1921 – While on an American tour, Italian Fascist General (and future Prime Minister) Pietro Badoglio was honored as a "World War Hero" at a banquet hosted by the Chamber of Commerce.

1922

• March 1922 - The Alexandria ballroom was converted into "Bugland" for the annual "Artists' Ball." The walls were covered with vivid purple, green, gold and black tapestries "depicting beetles, dragons, water dogs, and bugs, bugs, bugs of all climes, some of them so fantastic that they must have been imported from Mars." The wall lights were camouflaged with giant bugs, and the lack of visible lights "added mystery to the fairyland scene."