The main entrance off Sunset Boulevard into the Cock ‘n Bull – the distinctive red door – opened onto a small alcove. On the right as you entered the restaurant is the bar area, with 10 or so stools and a handful of small tables around it and a couple of small tables along the opposite wall. Beyond the bar, the buffet was straight ahead with a round dining table on the left. The dining areas were behind the buffet. A suit of armor stood against wall in the main room which was lined with wood-stained wainscoting and tallboy buffets. There was a second, cozier dining room in the back that had the same vibe. One wall was dominated by an unusual floor-to-ceiling copper-clad fireplace that added to the room’s sense of intimacy and warmth.
Longtime Cock ‘n Bull regular Richard Bare, the film and television director, attributed the décor, cuisine and ambiance to Jack Morgan’s family background and his education at Oxford. The walls were paneled in dark oak, Bare wrote. “The decorations [were] quite English, polished brass lanterns, authentic old prints and etchings, Toby mugs, and autographs of historical celebrities like Robert Browning and an assortment of English kings.”
The most distinctive British artifact was the suit of armor. “I remember coming in one time and seeing a suit of armor lying in a chair,” said producer-director Robert Lehman. “I mentioned to the bartender that it was a funny idea. He said, “Lift up the visor.” I did and there was someone in there, asleep.”
Richard Bare
There are very few sources on the history of the Cock ‘n Bull. The television director Richard Bare was a regular at the Cock ‘n Bull for many years, right up to the end. A California native who attended the USC School of Cinematic Arts in Los Angeles, Bare directed a series of shorts for Warner Brothers – 61 of them from 1942 to 1956 – that played as comedic interstitials in movie theatres’ bills of fare. The shorts often ran after the cartoon and before the feature in evening or matinee offering at theatres across the country.
The title of each short started with some formulation of “So You Want to,” as in “So You Want to Wear Pants,” “So You Want to Be an Heir,” “So You’re Going to the Dentist,” “So You Want to Be a Gladiator and “So You Want to Be a Banker.” The central character was a long-suffering everyman named Joe McDoakes who suffers through the travails of modern life.
Bare made the transition from film to television early, directing a nature documentary for “The Magical World of Disney” in 1954, titled “The Vanishing Prairie/Seal Island.” From 1955 to 1962, he directed “Cheyenne,” a television western that starred Clint Walker as Cheyenne Bodie, an itinerant good guy who traveled the post-Civil War West dispatching bad guys and courting virtuous women before hitting the trail again and moving on.
In the 1960s, he directed “77 Sunset Strip,” “Maverick,” “The Twilight Zone” Petticoat Junction” and others – but he is especially associated with the zany sitcom, “Green Acres,” which starred Eva Gabor, Eddie Albert and Arnold Ziffle, an extraordinarily smart pig.
Bare wrote a textbook, The Film Director, published in 1973. He also wrote a memoir published in 2001, titled, Confessions of a Hollywood Director, that is the source of his quotations published here. He died in Newport Beach, California, in 2015.
Richard Bare remembered Jack and Percy Morgan as “two old-school restaurateurs who prided themselves on knowing their customers, for whom they occasionally bought a drink or two.” Jack Morgan was “an Anglophile (Anglomaniac, some said)… who covered his walls with 19th-Century English newspapers, prints of English scenes and autographs of English royalty such as Queen Victoria – rather than those of Hollywood-type royalty.”
The Food
The Cock ‘n Bull’s bar was one of the most popular on the Strip, but for many people the main attraction of the Cock ‘n Bull was the British-style cuisine. The first sight through the red door was a hot food buffet. When they were seated, diners were served a salad and Welsh rabbit, a melted cheese dish served on an English crumpet made especially for the Cock ‘n Bull. Crumpets and jam were served with dinner.
After the first course, they would serve themselves from the buffet. The cuisine doesn’t sound as appealing now as it did in the last century, but the food got rave reviews back in the day. “Originally, Morgan planned a tavern with a few snacks,” Richard Bare wrote, “but those tidbits were so good the menu grew and grew until today there’s a magnificent buffet table spread with baked turkey, fried chicken, broiled squab, browned potatoes, an out-of-this-world horseradish, vegetables, piles of hot crumpets and, well, just heaps of beautiful food!”
The buffet also offered prime ribs of beef and thick slices of ham, accompanied by potatoes and fresh vegetables. For desert, there was An authentic Yorkshire pudding as well as English Trifle, a rich dessert made with sponge cake or lady fingers, rum, whipped cream and other ingredients.
The Bar
The Cock ‘n Bull’s gravitational center was the bar, which was located immediately to the right upon entering from the street. It was a classic dark-paneled space, set back from the main room. Richard Bare wrote that in the 1970s “character actors John Carradine, Fred Clark and Sonny Tufts would sit at the bar nightly.” He described the Cock ‘n Bull as “the closest thing to a private club – but don’t get the idea there were no dues. You could run up a monthly tab at the Cock ‘n Bull that would put a sizable dent in the national debt, especially when you were lonely.” There were women regulars, too. Many of whom were divorced, the ex-wives of actors. Bare listed “Errol Flynn’s and Dick Haymes’s ex-wife, Nora [Eddington]; Donald O’Connor’s and Dan Dailey’s ex-wife, Gwen [Carter]; and Jackie Cooper’s ex-wife, June [Horne], whose father was the famous silent film director James W. Horne.” The divorcees weren’t there to pick up men, Bare wrote. They liked the Cock ‘n Bull’s bar “because it was a friendly, comfortable place when there was nothing better to do.”
The bar was known for its generous pours. Bartenders served the full range of alcoholic beverages, but an early signature drink was Pimm’s Cup, a venerable British concoction that is one of the official drinks at Wimbledon. It’s made with Pimm’s gin liqueur, lemonade (or lemon soda like 7Up or ginger ale) and garnished with a thin slice of cucumber.
There were private offices on restaurant’s second floor, one of which was rented by Jessie Wadsworth, a rare woman talent agent in those days. In fact, Richard Bare claimed she was the first female agent. Bare wrote about an incident in the bar one night involving Jessie and the actor Sonny Tufts, a tall, handsome New England aristo who was a contract player for Paramount. He was also a regular at the Cock ‘n Bull bar and a famous drinker.
Jessie, a septuagenarian who always wore huge hats, according to Richard Bare, usually stopped by the bar after work. “One night Sonny Tufts started a heated argument with somebody,” Bare recalled. “Things got out of hand and Sonny threw a punch at him, but the fellow ducked adroitly. Sonny’s punch couldn’t be stopped in midair and landed squarely on Jessie Wadsworth’s fragile jaw. She went careening off her barstool onto the floor. Jack Morgan ran to the poor woman’s side and saw that Jessie was out cold.”
Jack Morgan came in at the end so that all he saw was the tall actor punch the little lady. “Get out of here, you drunken bum!” Morgan shouted at Sonny. “And don’t come in here again-ever!” Sonny did as he was told. He paid his tab and left. According to Bare, regulars whom Jack Morgan ordered never to come back were usually back on a bar stool in a couple of weeks. “Jack and Percy Morgan were never ones to hold a grudge.”