Bart Lytton
The improvements to the Garden of Allah failed to revive its glory days. In the spring of 1957, Frank Ehrhart sold the hotel to Morris Markowitz, a real-estate developer, and Isadore Rosenus, a clothing manufacturer turned investor who’d made a small fortune in oil. Their purchase price waas $500,000 – about $5.7 million today. But then, five months later, Isodore Rosenus died. After his estate was settled in the spring of 1958, Rosenus’ widow and Morris Markowiktz put the Garden up for sale again.
A year later they found a buyer. On April 11, 1959, the Times reported that Bart Lytton, CEO of Lytton Savings and Loan in Calabasas, had bought the Garden for $775,000, roughly $8.6 million now.
Lytton was a banker and had no interest in operating a hotel. He planned to raze the Garden and build a modern banking headquarters on the lot. His plans for the 2.5-acre property included a wide concrete plaza, park, and an office tower. (The Park and the office tower were never built.) The Garden’s days as a bohemian refuge were over.
The Times reported the sale as a matter of fate: “Garden of Allah, Once an Oasis, to Face Kismet”.
Inspired by the hotel’s legendary opening party in 1927, Lytton and Markowitz staged a farewell bash in August 1959. The budget was $75,000 – more than $600,000 today. Guests were asked to dress as celebrities from the Garden’s heyday. Instead of 350 invitees, over 1,000 showed up. The pool was surrounded by faux Valentinos, Clara Bows, Chaplins, and Mae Wests. One guest even came dressed as Nazimova.
But the real stars were absent. F. Scott Fitzgerald was long dead. Nazimova had passed in 1945. Bogart died in 1957. Ava Gardner was filming in Australia. Sinatra was riding a career resurgence. Reagan was hosting General Electric Theater. Errol Flynn would be dead in less than two months.
Sheilah Graham, one of the few authentic voices present, described the crowd as “shapely starlets, young male feature players and middle-aged executives.” Most were scantily dressed, hoping to catch a producer’s eye. Nazimova’s silent film Salome was projected onto a wall above the pool, her ghost flickering over the revelers. Few watched. The party devolved into chaos. Guests fell – or were pushed – into the pool, splashing about surrounded by discarded liquor bottles.
Graham wrote: “The Garden of Allah did not go out with a whimper. It had a last bang. It had opened with a party, and it ended with one. It was fitting. It had been a nonstop party from start to finish”.
The next morning, the hotel’s contents were auctioned off. Flynn’s bed was sold multiple times. Within weeks, the main house and villas were demolished. The pool was drained and filled with debris. The cypresses and pepperwoods were cleared.
The Garden of Allah was gone.