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| 1940s Hollywood, CA |
CONTINUING SERIES ON COOL JOINTS--“...Musso’s became a literary hangout in the
1930s, when studio executives began to recruit great American authors to
Hollywood, hoping their names would help sell tickets. With the Screen Writers
Guild just across the street, the writers — tired of working under the execs’
watchful eyes — began to spend time at the restaurant.
If they weren't in Musso’s
Back Room, they could be found at the Stanley Rose Bookshop, which at the time
was Musso’s neighbor to the east.
Working late into the night
under the comforting amber glow of the great chandeliers in the famous Back
Room, writers like literary greats F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner and
Raymond Chandler could have considered Musso’s a second home.
Fitzgerald was known to
proofread his novels while sitting in a booth at Musso’s. Faulkner met his
mistress of 20 years here, and was so chummy with the bartenders in the Back
Room, that he used to go behind the bar to mix his own mint juleps. Raymond
Chandler wrote several chapters of “The Big Sleep” while sipping drinks in the
Back Room.
T.S. Elliot, William
Sorayan, Aldous Huxley, Max Brand, John Steinbeck, John O’Hara and Dorothy
Parker also made their home at the Musso’s bar.
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| Main dining room of Musso & Frank's, Hollywood, CA |
After the Back Room closed
and the bar moved to its current location in the New Room in 1955, the
tradition lived on, and new generations of writers found themselves at Musso's.
Following in the footsteps of the masters who had inspired them, writers like
Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut and Charles Bukowski became regulars, who, along
with their martinis and highballs, drank up the creative juices left behind by
their heroes.
The Los Angeles Times once wrote that if you stood in Musso’s Back Room
long enough you, “…would have seen every living writer you had ever heard of,
and some you would not know until later.”
NOTE: The following history
is well written and found on the legendary establishment’s website.
Musso & Frank Grill
6667 Hollywood Boulevard
323-467-7788
www.mussoandfrank.com
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