A s awards season approaches, one can hardly imagine that it will provide an image as iconic as one morning-after shot taken by the pool of the Beverly Hills Hotel in 1977. A woman in a gold dressing gown and silver heels reclines, deep in thought, in a white chair. The pool stretches out behind her in all its turquoise glory ; she’s surrounded by newspapers; on a table are pots of tea , a lighter, and an Oscar for best actress.
The woman is Faye Dunaway, who’d won the Oscar the previous evening and reportedly hadn’t slept much before her then boyfriend Terry O’Neill snapped what would go on to become one of the most famous celebrity portraits of the 20th century. The newspaper headlines tell the story. Her Network co-star Peter Finch had won a posthumous Oscar to join Dunaway’s; he’d died of a heart attack in the hotel’s lobby two months earlier.
That was almost half a century ago but it’s just one of many moments of Hollywood lore that the Beverly Hills Hotel can claim as its own. Others include the LA hotspot being the inspiration behind The Eagles’ classic “Hotel California”, as well as the place where Elizabeth Taylor honeymooned six times – legend has it that she and Richard Burton had a standing room-service order that included two bottles of vodka with breakfast followed by another two at lunch. The Beverly Hills Hotel is also where the reclusive tycoon Howard Hughes lived for 30 years in one of the infamous bungalows, obsessively watching movi.
