I love Hollywood, but one night there was enough for me.
My room at the Roosevelt was cozy and nice---although I banged my shin on the wooden bed frame.
The window looked out over the back of Hollywood High School, with a a great view of the giant mural of the mascot, the Sheik. Behind it was the skyline of downtown L.A.
After freshening up, I went back down to the lobby where I got to be an audience extra during the taping of a segment for the film festival. Robert Osborne interviewed Maureen O'Hara. The great actress was carried out in her wheel chair by her grandson. She spoke at length about her favorite soccer team in Ireland, and her admiration for Charles Laughton, who had signed her to an early contract. Several people called out "John Wayne" from the audience, and with that prompting she waxed about Wayne as well.
But she intimated that among the many leading men she'd had, she did not always enjoy kissing all of them.
That evening, feeling restless and aventurous, I went out walking east along nearby Sunset, which runs parallel to Hollywood Boulevard. I got caught up in a conversation with a gentle schizophrenic homeless person until politely excusing myself and leaving a dollar coin for his trouble. In one storefront window there was a portrait of the late Mickey Rooney, who had just passed away. His movies were on TCM all day that day. When I had left the room, Boys Town had been playing.
In the perfect evening light, I followed Sunset past Gower Gulch and several studio complexes, then across the freeway into Little Armenia. Then I walked up Western to Hollywood Boulevard again, and started back west towards my hotel as the sun sank behind the hills.
As it got fully dark, a half block from the hotel, I lingered a few moments at the corner of Highland, thick with tourists, just people watching off to the side, while leaning against the wall of the Ripley's Museum.
I was rewarded in my leisure by a sighting of Ben Mankiewicz. He was waiting to cross the stoplight, looking around into traffic. I took the opportunity to introduce myself just long enough to thank for his work with TCM. After a pleasant brief conversation at the light, he went off across Hollywood Boulevard looking for some other location, or for his car. Good guy, Ben Mankiewicz. He's a big fan of Bullit.
When I got back to the hotel I went to the bar and ordered an old fashion as a nightcap. The waiter asked how it was. I let the waves of flavor roll over my tongue before answering that it was quite a nice concotion on his part.
In the morning I checked out, took the subway back downtown, then caught the Metrolink out to Orange County. I got off at Santa Ana station and caught a local bus a couple miles south, then got off a block away from the Quality Suites, where I'd made a reservation. It was the Quality Suites John Wayne Airport, doncha know?
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