The Grand Hotels

When I die, I should like to do so in the foyer of the best hotel in the world. For one thing, I feel most confident in hotel foyers; and for another, disposing of my corpse would be a final test for the hall porter. I have always been a snob about hotels--about people, too, I suppose--but that need not concern us. For me, the best hotel in whatever place I happen to be is a must. Ensconced in any other establishment, I tend to sulk. Once, on a steamer to Capri, I was examining the luggage tags of one of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen, when I discovered to my dismay that she was bound for a different hotel from the one I had selected. I decided there and then to adjust my itinerary, to stay where she stayed. Yet it was not the child's beauty that prompted my action but the obvious wealth of her companion. He was, I decided, an Indian princeling and, as such, could be relied upon. When we landed, I followed hard on their heels, up the mountain to Anacapri and through the revolving doors of their Shangri-La, only to be dismissed by an obdurate reception clerk. Forced to return to the hotel of my original choice, I spent my holiday in jealous despair.

Each new hotel has for me the excitement of an untried mistress. I am impatient with the preliminaries, eager to register and afterward to rid myself of the attentions of the bellhop who has preceded me with my key along the corridor and unlocked my room. I watch him demonstrating the central heating, the closet light, the television remote controls, and long for the moment when he will withdraw and leave me in possession. I know from experience it will be a considerable time before my luggage arrives; and meanwhile, my room and I will be getting to know each other. As soon as the bellhop collects his fee and withdraws, I hurry into the bathroom to inspect the plumbing, to admire the tumblers wrapped in cellophane and the lavatory pan decorated as if for a marriage. Is there a bidet? How large are the soap bars? How many towels? I listen to the noise of the toilet flush, make sure I understand how the lavatory taps function. These grow more complicated with every year. I hurry back into the bedroom to inspect the thickness of the drapes, the pile of the carpet. I adjust the lights, toy with the television, take in the view. This is the moment of truth, and I must ask myself whether this is really the best bedroom I can expect--for the price. Am I on the right side of the building at the right height? Do I want to look out over the swimming pool or the garage? Now is the time for action, if I decide to change. I must pick up the phone and demand to be connected with the desk clerk; get into the poker game and be prepared, if necessary, to have him call my bluff. My decision as to whether to accept the original accommodation proffered or to try and improve on my hand depends largely on the ambiance I have already encountered at the reception desk. I can usually tell whether I am being given the bum's rush. One day, I will accept a small back room over the dustbins; on another, even a penthouse suite is inadequate. Having decided to stay put, I start to explore the closets, paying particular attention to the way the doors are hung and how the drawers slide. I assess the writing paper, read the breakfast menu and the other brochures provided. I like to know that I can write letters on all kinds of differently shaped paper and that there is a wide choice of breakfast cereals, bars and restaurants. I am always ready to sample Grape-Nuts Flakes, to plan an evening in their Sapphire Room or the House of Genji, to have a cocktail in the Eagle's Nest or the Imperial Viking, a nightcap in Nero's Nook. I avoid coffee shops and grillrooms, believing that if a man has taken the trouble to find a name, however bizarre, he may also have taken the trouble to find a decent chef.

I have always believed in myself as a world jurist where hotels are concerned. I still hope that even now, in the afternoon, the early afternoon, of my life, I may be invited to serve. How pleasant it would be to travel the world in the company of a few others like myself, sampling the delights of extravagances provided by great hoteliers and to award the annual Roberts. There would have to be several, naturally: for the hotel that had the best wine cellar, the hotel with the best plumbing, the one with the best hall porter, the best hotel built in the past year, the hotel with the most beautiful setting, or simply the most beautiful hotel. If actresses are entitled to Oscars, why not hotels? The latter are more exciting, more unpredictable and, with notable exceptions, better behaved. Moreover, hotels, except those in the very top class, have to show off. I am never intimidated by ostentation; being in the entertainment business myself, I understand it.

Once, while staying at a hotel in Fez where the uniforms of the staff were the most magnificent I have ever encountered, I approached a, lackey even more gorgeously attired than the bellboys, whom I imagined to be the hall porter, and made some trivial request about procuring a fleet of camels for the afternoon. "I think you are making a mistake," remarked my accosted. "I have the honor to be the personal aide-de-camp to His Majesty the King of Libya." I shook him warmly by the hand but did not apologize. In selecting what are, in my opinion, the seven great hotels of the world, I am tempted to include this beautiful Moroccan caravansary; but things have changed in Morocco since I was there; besides, a simultaneous visit of myself and the King of Libya may have ensured an unnatural and temporary standard of excellence. An even more potent reason for not including it in my list is that I have forgotten its name.

I am not in favor of the Roberts Award Committee, when it is formed, arriving anywhere incognito. Let us see the best you can do--not the worst--should be our admonition. Personally, I am careful, when arriving at any hotel where I suspect I may--initially, at least--be unrecognized, to employ a gamesmanship ploy of which I and not Stephen Potter am the inventor. "I think," I remark casually, leaning across the reception desk and addressing the clerk, "you may be expecting me. My secretary has made the reservation: Robert Morley." I speak the last two words slowly and loudly. The impression I wish to give is that I am far too modest to believe that my name will mean anything to him; and if, as sometimes happens, the idiot hasn't, in fact, heard of me, he will begin to check his list. "Nothing here," he will remark after he has done so. I take care to appear thunderstruck. "Are you quite certain? My secretary has been with me a number of years and this is the first time anything like this has happened."

After this, I play it by ear. If, as sometimes, there is plenty of accommodation available, I like to believe that I will be offered something a little better than would have been the case if I had not established that I had a secretary. If the hotel is full, well, the reception clerk may feel a little uneasy and manage to find me a niche, providing that I am not traveling with my mother-in-law, Dame Gladys Cooper.

We were in Las Vegas together the last time I employed my gambit and had the clerk on the ropes and about to produce the accommodation. Suddenly, Gladys spoke. "You know perfectly well, Robert, you haven't reserved anything. You are only confusing the poor young man; and, in any case, I don't want to stay here. I am sure we shall be much happier in that nice motel next door." That would have been the end of that, except that the nice motel next door was full and we were obliged to crawl back ten minutes later. "Another time, perhaps you'll leave it to me," I told her, surveying the inadequate accommodation with which I had eventually been provided. "Another time," replied Gladys, "I will have my secretary handle the reservations. We stand a better chance with her; at least she exists!"

The reason I am so well qualified to serve on the Roberts Committee is that I have a nose for good restaurants. Put me down anywhere in a strange city and, like a truffle hound straining at the leash, I will lead my party to the most delectable morsels. Where hotels are concerned, my perception is equally uncanny.

Half-a-dozen steps across the threshold and I can tell whether a hotel is fully adjusted. If not, then I prefer to put my polo sticks back into the boot of the Rolls-Royce and drive on. However imposing the façade, splendid the foyer, extravagant the furnishing, gorgeously costumed the bellboys and luxurious the beds, unless a hotel is "adjusted," neither you nor I will be happy there. In a restaurant, one can return the beef Stroganoff to the chef with a courteous request that he try again and, while he is doing so, continue to toy with the caviar. The meal can be salvaged. But there is nothing to be done with a hotel that is ill adjusted except pack and leave. It won't be difficult for you to do so early on your first morning, because the chambermaid will already have made an entrance, or at least knocked loudly on your door, demanding to know if you rang. She does this to ensure that you will not oversleep and fail to give her a chance to do your room when it suits her fancy. In an ill-adjusted hotel, you will not be able to enjoy breakfast in bed. If you persevere with the telephone, you will eventually be able to contact room service; but, having done so, you will be well advised to allow for the inevitable time lag and order luncheon. The last time I stayed at a hotel in New York, I was amazed to find the breakfast cart being trundled to my bedside a bare 20 minutes after I had put down the phone. "This can't possibly by my breakfast," I told the waiter. "I ordered it under an hour ago." The waiter shrugged his shoulders sympathetically and started to wheel the individually gathered, sundrenched blueberries with pasteurized double cream and thin hot cakes out of the door and back along the corridor. After a struggle, I regained possession. "Finders keepers!" I told him.

The best room service in the world is enjoyed by guests of the Westminster Hotel in Le Touquet-Paris-Plage. There, one can reach out and press the bell push (suitably decorated with a picture of a waiter) and, within two minutes, the breakfast tray is resting lightly on one's stomach. The Westminster is, as I have noted, a supreme example of efficiency in this respect; but all over Europe, unlike the U. S. A., there are hotels that expect their guests to order breakfast around nine o'clock and are prepared to serve it within five minutes of their having done so. The simple secret is to have a kitchen on each floor; it is a secret that, except in rare instances, you Americans have not yet discovered.

For my money, and I admit a good deal of it is required whenever I am a guest there, the greatest hotel in the world is the Ritz in Paris. It is really two hotels, one situated in the Place Vendôme and the other in the Rue Cambon. I have never quite understood the(continued on page 122) Grand Hotels (continued from page 114)geography of this beautiful building. To walk from the Place Vendôme to the Rue Cambon takes me at least five minutes and I have to cross several streets in order to do so; and yet if I make the same journey through the Ritz itself, along the elegant arcade, with its showcases glittering with diamonds and broderie anglaise, I am there in half the time. A simple explanation may occur to the reader--one way is circuitous, the other direct--but what happens to the streets? They certainly don't run through the Ritz itself; indeed, in the center of the hotel, there are only a number of mysterious secret gardens, gravel-pathed and silent. I haven't the least idea how many bedrooms there are in the Ritz, only that in proportion to its size, there are very few. It is the extravagance of the building that attracts me; I do not care for hotels that conserve space. I do not approve of batteries for hens or humans.

I am essentially a Rue Cambon man myself, although I often enter the hotel from the Place Vendôme and admire the vast foyer, peopled at teatime by elaborately bewigged archduchesses and exmonarchs waiting with well-bred boredom for their cucumber sandwiches. In the evening, a small string orchestra plays in the restaurant and an indescribable and reassuring melancholy hangs in the air. The diners have, for the most part, eaten all the caviar they are ever likely to actively enjoy on this earth, but the spoon still travels to the mouth loaded with the little black grains and returns stained to the plate.

In the Espadon, which is the restaurant on my side of the hotel, the pace is altogether brisker. Caviar is eaten, but on toast. There is no vast entrance hall and a comparatively narrow passage leads from the Rue Cambon up a short flight of steps to the reception desk immediately opposite the hall porter's. Farther on, where the passage ends and the glass doors of the Espadon open invitingly, is a small foyer usually cluttered with tables overflowing from the restaurant, and with French windows opening onto one of the gardens where, on summer evenings, it is also possible to dine.

But it is with its bedrooms that the Ritz really scores. The timeless elegance of the furnishings, the gilt and the glitter, the huge wardrobes, the small sofas, the brass bedsteads--and the golden clocks. I can never look at the last without a twinge of conscience; for once, long ago, I stopped all the clocks in the Ritz by yanking out a wire from one over my daughter's bed when she complained the ticking was too loud and kept her awake. "I'll soon fix that," I told her. and I did. The trouble was that the next morning, no one would believe I was the culprit. In vain, I telephoned the hall porter to confess my guilt. "Impossible, monsieur, you are not to blame," he assured me. "We are searching for the fault. It is the same in all the rooms. Be patient." "At least," I begged him, "send someone up to my suite to investigate." "Useless, cher monsieur," he protested, "the fault is with the electricity supply. Our engineers are in conference with the minister." In the end, I climbed onto a chair and poked the wire back into its socket. At once, my clock, like all the others in the Ritz that morning, started again. But, for me, the Ritz is the best hotel in the world not because of its electric clocks, or even despite them, but simply because it is the most comfortable to stay in. A guest in the Ritz is a guest of the Ritz, and no member of the staff ever forgets this simple fact for a single moment.

If you walk out of the Ritz into the Place Vendôme and turn left into the Rue de Rivoli, you will come in a moment to a teashop. Last summer, seated inside, I found an old friend and joined her for an éclair. It is sad how éclairs have almost entirely vanished from the tea table; in my youth, they were obligatory, like conversation and visiting cards. In any case, my friend, a lady of enormous wealth, was lamenting the passing of the teacake. "It is something I miss," she remarked, "like Baden-Baden."

"But surely," I urged, "Baden-Baden remains."

"Not for me," she replied. "And even if you were right, I don't suppose I should care for it nowadays. I used to go there when I was a little girl, and what I remember most about Baden-Baden is the grand dukes and their enormous trunks. The porters at the Baden-Baden railway station were the strongest porters in the world; they had to be.

"Today," my friend continued, "one seldom sees a trunk as large as those; and when one does, one has to be on one's guard. Last year, I saw one at the Ritz, of all places. It was late at night and they were wheeling it along the passage. I happened to open my bedroom door and there it was. Behind walked the owner. I am certain he wasn't a grand duke. He looked," she stabbed the air thoughtfully with her fork, "as if he might have been a traveling salesman. One couldn't be sure, naturally. As you know, Robert, dear, I am not a snob; moreover, I am a very simple woman. I have a suite of rooms at the Ritz, another at the Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo and a small house in London. With these, unlike most women I know, I am content. But if I am right about that traveler--and I hope very much I am not right--why, then, I may have to consider reopening my apartment in Versailles; at any rate, during the summer months. The danger, I imagine, would hardly arise in the winter; at that time of the year, I prefer Monte Carlo."

"So do I," I told her; and. indeed, I do. I am drawn to Monte Carlo like a pilgrim to Mecca or an art lover to Florence, because Monte Carlo still represents, for me, the center of gambling in the world. In the center of a whirlwind. although I have never proved this theory personally, there is said to be a vacuum. I can prove, however, that at the heart of Monte Carlo, in the great entrance hall of the Hôtel de Paris, nothing stirs. There in the entrance hall, arranged possibly by some fabulous interior decorator, sit the ladies and gentlemen in waiting. In gigantic hats and wearing great quantities of jewelry and eye shadow, or blue-blazered and occasionally toupeed, they sit in the hotel as to the manner born. Elegant, resourceful, infinitely patient, they neither fidget nor fuss. Their purpose is to reassure the ordinary traveler that he, too, has arrived. Every now and then, one of them will rise and make his or her way to the elevator or out onto the terrace. It is not for us to inquire where they are going. They are going off duty, and that must suffice us.

The Hôtel de Paris has more to offer even than its clientele. It moves with the times and now has a superb roof restaurant and an indoor swimming pool. It also has the prettiest breakfast china in Europe and the unique advantage that people never stay there on business or because they want to look at churches or trudge round picture galleries. They go to put their feet up and to enjoy themselves. There are not nearly enough places where one can simply put one's feet up in Europe; but just on the edge of it, just before you cross the Bosporus and find yourself in Asia, there stands in a small Turkish village called Yesilköy. 20 miles from Istanbul on the Sea of Marmara, my third great hotel--the Cinar.

There is something very attractive about the Sea of Marmara. I would not care to stay on the Bosporus, which is surprisingly narrow, so that the Russian tankers finding their way up the channel occasionally lodge fast in some unfortunate Turk's front parlor. No such danger presents itself to guests of the Cinar, which passed all the tests to which I subjected it and one that had not occurred to me--an earthquake. I am not fond of earthquakes, and this one caught me, as is their custom, unawares and about to step into a bath. I draped myself in a towel and hurried into the passage. A few doors opened and one or two guests made for the elevators, while others returned to their rooms as the tremors subsided. I hesitated, uncertain which course to pursue. and then I happened to glance out of a window. What I saw persuaded me to hurry down the stairway and rush pell-mell into the garden, where I joined the dozen or so chefs(continued on page 218) Grand Hotels (continued from page 122) whom I had spied from the corridor. Instinctively, I felt these were the men to follow. They seemed content to stand around for a time, chatting, and so was I. We were presently joined by an American professor who was, I had learned previously, in Turkey to arrange a program for a computer. It appeared that the American Government had given the Turkish government a computer, for which the latter was unable to find a use. To help the Turks solve their problem, the Americans had now thrown in the professor, whose task was to find a job worthy of the computer's prowess. "I am thinking," he had told me, "of putting it to work analyzing the drinking water from various provinces. I don't know about the local authorities, but I am pretty sure the computer will get quite a shock." On the occasion of the earthquake, I was delighted to see him. "Is it safe for me to return and have my bath?" I inquired. He consulted his watch and advised us all to wait another four minutes. We should either have another quake almost immediately, he insisted, or we shouldn't. I waited patiently, while he continued to observe the minute hand. Eventually, he looked up. "Bathtime," he said reassuringly, and I and the chefs returned to our tasks.

While still in this part of the world, a word, perhaps, about the Hilton Hotel in Athens. Although not one for my list, it stands head and shoulders above all the other Hilton Hotels at which I have stayed, including the London Hilton--which stands head and shoulders above Buckingham Palace. It would be foolish to belittle Mr. Hilton or to deny that in many cities, such as Athens, he has imposed new standards of comfort and cleanliness not only on the natives but also on some of his guests. He reassures the American traveler--although not, oddly enough, the British. But, then, does anything reassure us? For myself, it is the Hilton elevators that alarm. A slow mover, I am frequently attacked by the doors.

At the inaugural party to launch the London Hilton, I was retained to introduce the cabaret, which was performed between the courses and was intended to emphasize the international flavor of the feast. Japanese jugglers followed the bird's-nest soup; a French singer, the poulet. The waiter assigned to our table glanced at the affluent and distinguished guests, who included Mr. J. Paul Getty and Mr. Hilton himself. "This looks," he told us, "as if it might turn out a funny evening. Ladies, will you please put your handbags in the center of the table, where we can all keep our eyes on them."

American waiters are experts on cutting any proceedings down to size. How often they demolish the elegant, sophisticated atmosphere so carefully built up by host and proprietor with that honest shout of "Who gets the consommé?" But their English cousins are seldom far behind. The best waiters, like the best lovers, are Latins. What the Englishman and the American lack in technique in both bedroom and banquet hall, they attempt unsuccessfully to cover up with bonhomie. Alas, there is more to laying a table or a lady than high spirits. Outside of London, the traveler who stays in a British-owned and -operated hotel must not expect to be pampered. He will find that meals are served when it suits the Hotel Catering Act to do so. Bedrooms are kept at a temperature that will encourage the client to spend money on gas or electric fires to stop shivering. Bathrooms are scarce, bleak and remote. What I find most depressing about British hotels is the display of literature in their public rooms. A British hotelier would rather shoot himself than buy a paper or a book for his guests to read. Such magazines as one finds in the smoking room of The Crown, The Feathers or The George must not only be at least a year old and bereft of cover but must also have been issued free, and deal with such subjects as canoeing or topiary gardening.

The more modern the hotel in Britain, the smaller the bedroom, the longer the corridor. The emphasis is on discipline. You are not, for instance, expected to upset your morning coffee. Having done so in Manchester one morning, I phoned for assistance. I was prepared for the staff to remove the sheets, but not the mattress. There was nothing to do but get up--never a wise thing to do in Manchester until one is actually required at the theater. I was stepping into the bath when the phone rang. Big Brother had been informed. "We understand," a voice told me, "that you have soiled your bed. There will be an additional charge on your bill." How different from the hotel in New Orleans where, after a stay of a fortnight, there wasn't a bill at all. "We like actors," they told me, and charged only for telephone calls. Were it not that any hotel quite so recklessly conducted must have long since gone out of business, I would proudly include it in my list. On the whole, the British find little pleasure in staying in their own hotels, possibly because there is very little pleasure in doing so, with the exception of my fourth great hotel--Claridge's in London. No praise can be too high for this superb annex to Buckingham Palace. It is the refuge of monarchs and presidents, protecting them while they reign and caring for them long after they have abdicated or been deposed. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, except on a Claridge's pillow slip. The management also entertains film producers, landed gentry, ambassadors, debutantes, actors intoxicated by their press cuttings and sober citizens. Claridge's is immensely comfortable, superbly intimate, faultlessly maintained, more of a club than a hotel and more of a home than either. Most surprising of all, there are few foreigners on its staff.

Oddly enough, there was a British waiter on the staff of my fifth hotel, the Imperial in Vienna. Vienna is a city of make-believe. Where else would you find the horn of a unicorn on display next to a golden rose? It is a city where horses prance under the chandeliers in the riding school and where the Russians, taking a hint from their hosts, stabled their own cavalry in the ballroom of the Imperial and roasted an ox on its marble staircase. But when they left, their hosts, not a whit abashed by such vandalism, managed to get everything back in place, along with the gilt mirrors and the chandeliers, and reopened for business within a year. Very comfortable it was when I was there making a film called The Journey with Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr. Yul's part in the picture demanded that he should be constantly chewing on a wineglass; but the rest of us sat around happily in the hotel dining room, munching Rhine salmon and wild strawberries, and occasionally ventured forth to the location, accompanied by a vast quantity of cardboard on which cotton wool had been affixed and which had to be scattered over the countryside to represent the snows of yesteryear.

I was accompanied by my wife and children, who in those days were fascinated with the enormous gas balloons sold in the Prater just beside the Great Wheel immortalized in The Third Man. These they would bear back to the Imperial in triumph and then, forgetful as ever, release, whereupon the balloons would sail upward and bump along the ceiling. It seemed that there was always a porter perched on a stepladder in our sitting room. "You really mustn't bother him again," I would tell my son. "But he likes it, Poppa, he really does," would be the reply. Not, of course, the only reason for including the Imperial, but certainly one of them.

A hotel is only as good as its staff, and my sixth among the giants persists in the supreme folly of dressing up its employees as if they were about to attend a children's costume party. Don't be dismayed, therefore, when, on arrival, the door of your car is opened by a gentleman sweltering in the guise of a beefeater or when your luggage is unloaded by another dressed as if for the paddy fields. You are not in the Tower of London or Vietnam, you are not even in Disneyland; you have merely arrived at the Century Plaza in Beverly Hills, California. There are various theories about the costumes. The hotel is built on part of what used to be the 20th Century lot and some think the film company threw in the wardrobe along with the land. Others see a sinister attempt to lull the nation into a false sense of security, so that when the threatened Chinese invasion finally takes place, the American populace will be caught unawares. "Don't worry," they will be telling one another, "they are merely bellhops from the Century Plaza."

Once you have passed over the threshold, however, you will be very comfortable, indeed, in this hotel. It has the most efficient elevators, the best room service and the most enjoyab'e beds of any hotel in America. It is beautifully quiet and, except for the dressing up already noted, quietly beautiful.

Not as beautiful, of course, as my last great hotel, the Gritti Palace in Venice; but then, the latter has the manifestly unfair advantage of being on the Grand Canal. No other hotel in the world can compete with such a setting, and one can pay no higher tribute to the Gritti than to note that it deserves to be exactly where it is. It has the incomparable advantage of not having been built as a hotel. It was originally intended to be and, indeed, still is, a palace. The corridors meander, the bathrooms are never quite where you expect, the furniture not dreamed up by an interior decorator but collected piece by piece over the years, until at last the room is complete and fit for a guest. The last time I stayed there, I sent a bedside lamp crashing onto the marble floor. "If I can afford to pay for it, I will," I told the desk clerk. He dismissed the suggestion with a chuckle. Venice is a long way from Manchester.

There are other hotels in which I have stayed and been comfortable and content: the Mandarin in Hong Kong, the Tokyo Hilton, the Pierre Marques in Acapulco, the Black Buck in Wiesbaden and, surprisingly, the Europa in Leningrad. But the seven I have written of are the top. They have a reputation for perfection that over the years they have cherished and striven successfully to maintain. Most of us go through life haunted by a few anonymous, pleasurable scents: a flower sniffed in childhood, a special kind of wood fire, hops drying, a horse being shoed, furniture polish, vanilla, honeysuckle, straight bourbon. Now and again, perhaps in a strange house, or walking in the country, or passing along some city street, there comes borne over the air a remembered fragrance, which delights. Thus, when I first cross the lobby of a new hotel, I will pause for a moment with my nostrils hopefully flared. What is the scent for which I am patiently sniffing the air? It is the smell of confidence that comes from perfection.