Guests
Over the years, the Elysée has been home to baseball player Joe DiMaggio, prima ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn, coloratura Maria Callas, pianists Vladimir Horowitz and Jose Iturbi, playwrights Tennessee Williams, Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur, and producer Leland Hayward. The Masellas-Mack -Zaharatos families have also called the Elysee their home away from home while in New York.
It is known for hosting many well-known literary guests, including James Michener, Leon Uris and Jimmy Breslin. Other writers who stayed there were Mario Puzo, Mary McCarthy, Sidney Sheldon, Harold Robbins, James Clavell, and Robert C. Ruark – the latter becoming the hotel's self-appointed historian.
Also making their New York home at the Elysée were actors Marlon Brando, Louis Calhern, John and Ethel Barrymore, Helen Hayes, Kay Francis, Johnny (Tarzan) Weissmuller, Ava Gardner, Herbert Marshall, Paul Douglas, Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, Tallulah Bankhead, Sidney Poitier, and James Caan.
New York's leading hatcheck concessionaire, Mayer Quain, purchased the hotel out of bankruptcy in 1937. After the War, his children eclectically designed every room so that no two rooms were alike. In lieu of traditional numbers, the rooms were named to reflect their personality, such as the "Sayonara" suite assigned to Marlon Brando after his starring role in Teahouse of the August Moon. Tennessee Williams lived in the hotel for fifteen years and died in the "Sunset" suite.
Columnist Jimmy Breslin, who regards the Elysée as "a great hotel, a genuine New York landmark," succeeded Ruark as the hotel's unofficial chronicler. Upon Tennessee Williams's death at the Elysée in February 1983, Breslin recalled the story of a transient guest who called the front desk at 5:00 am complaining that someone in the next suite was keeping her awake by typing all night. "They knew right away who the culprit was, but they couldn't very well ask Mr. Williams to stop playwriting, so we simply moved the guest to another room."
In November 1948, Tallulah Bankhead celebrated President Harry S. Truman's stunning victory over Thomas E. Dewey by throwing a noisy party at the hotel that ran non-stop for five days and nights.
Read more about this topic: Hotel Elysee
Famous quotes containing the word guests:
“Few enjoy noisy overcrowded functions. But they are a gesture of goodwill on the part of host or hostess, and also on the part of guests who submit to them.”
—Fannie Hurst (1889–1968)
“When her guests were awash with champagne and with gin,
She was recklessly sober, as sharp as a pin.
An abstemious man would reel at her look,
As she rolled a bright eye and praised his last book.”
—William Plomer (1903–1973)
“One who does not welcome guests at home will meet very few hosts when he goes out.”
—Chinese proverb.