Battle of the Hotels : The Beverly Hills vs. the Bel-Air: A Duel in the Sun With Kid Gloves On

Marvin Davis, admittedly, is having the time of his life.

It’s not just because he can hold court at Table No. 503 in the Polo Lounge at breakfast, lunch and sometimes dinner. Or stand in the lobby and greet friends with a warm “Good morning” and a playful slap on the back.

It’s because he can finally say that the famed pink pleasure palace on Sunset Boulevard is his. Totally his. “I’ve found it’s a great pride and joy to own something like this,” exults the tycoon about his newest toy, the Beverly Hills Hotel, which he bought six months ago for $135 million.

One mile to the west, Caroline Hunt Schoellkopf, to a lesser but still significant degree, also has been putting her personal stamp on the equally prestigious Hotel Bel-Air, which she purchased in 1982. “I’ve said before that I consider myself a figurehead,” the Dallas heiress maintains. “If I serve any purpose at all, it is to be a personality for the hotel, not only for the public but for the employees.”

Both big-league multimillionaires, both oil barons, both out-of-towners, both desperately shy of personal publicity, Davis and Schoellkopf have a lot in common, even if they have only met once. They also are in the enviable position of owning two competing Los Angeles landmarks.

As a result, they have acquired instant status in this status-conscious town on a par with owning a major movie studio, heading a television network or producing an Oscar-winning film.

But owning a hotel is a lot less worrisome--and a lot more fun.

“Money buys you freedom. And it buys you the ability to play where you want to play,” explains a powerful and well-known agent/lawyer who counts both Davis and Schoellkopf among his friends. “Some people play in casinos, or on race tracks, or atop a mountain in Nepal. But if I were Marvin Davis or Caroline Schoellkopf at the moment, I’d do exactly what they did. I’d buy a hotel and turn it into my playground.”

Right now couldn’t be a better time to own either property.

In April, the 92-room Hotel Bel-Air, which completed its $12-million refurbishment and expansion in 1984, was chosen one of the 10 “Great Hotels in the World” by Travel & Leisure magazine.

This month, the 268-room Beverly Hills Hotel is celebrating its 75th anniversary in the midst of a $40-million freshening and modernization.

While there has not been a formal declaration of war between them, the Bel-Air and the Beverly Hills are furiously competing for the same entertainment and corporate moguls and their money. Further complicating the financial situation is the opening of the Four Seasons and new ownership at the Beverly Wilshire by the Regent Hotel International. Nevertheless, based on tradition and trendiness as well as personalities, the Pink Ladies are in a class by themselves.

Their management styles are as different as the ambiance of their hotels.

Marvin Davis had his checkbook out when feuding sisters Seema Boesky, wife of convicted Wall Street insider trader Ivan Boesky, and Muriel Slatkin put the Beverly Hills Hotel up for auction last winter. “I had an inkling when there was a rift between the sisters that it would probably be for sale someday,” he said in a rare interview. “So I mentioned to both sides that when it happened, I’d like to be considered.”

In fact, people both inside and outside the hotel were rooting for Davis. “Everybody was totally relieved when he bought it instead of a giant chain of hotels that wouldn’t have paid any attention to any of the hotel’s traditions,” Beverly Hills Hotel regular Christopher Plummer said.

The reason he wanted it so badly, Davis said, is that the Beverly Hills “has been part of my life for years.” He and his wife, Barbara, stayed there on their honeymoon. He and his family lived in Bungalow No. 1 for 4 1/2 years until they bought their Beverly Hills homestead from Kenny Rogers in 1984. “And my father died at the hotel not too long ago,” Davis added. It also meant that he could continue to maintain a high profile in town after selling out his 50% stake in 20th Century Fox Film Corp. to Rupert Murdoch in 1985 for $325 million.

Davis, already the owner of The Lodge at Pebble Beach, thinks his newest property is “a one-of-a-kind. It’s a meeting place for people. It’s a mecca for every business I’ve ever been in.”

And, most of all, he said, “It’s a hotel that’s just full of action.”

Davis eagerly soaks up every bit of it on a daily basis, especially when it’s from the vantage point of his Polo Lounge table directly opposite the door. (Some people say the reason the former owners of the Beverly Hills Hotel started fighting is that Muriel Slatkin wanted to call that spot hers.) In addition, Davis noted, “I’ve always liked the food,” volunteering that his favorite menu items are the fat pork sausages that he personally had brought in from Pebble Beach at breakfast and the chicken piccata sandwich, “which is out of this world at lunch.”

Enjoys Greeting People

Still, he has surprised many staff, strangers and even his friends by the obvious delight he takes in his new role. “People like to say hello to you and I like to say hello to people,” he explained. “Unfortunately, I’m in so many other ventures that my time is limited. But the few hours I spend on breakfasts and lunches give me a pretty good feel for what’s right and wrong about the hotel.”

If employees seem to be jumping more than usual, it’s because Davis placed all the staff on a probationary period soon after he bought the hotel. Reports have been circulating about a few fired members who are threatening to write “tell-all” books about celebrity guests past and present. Hotel spokeswoman Sheila O’Brien dismisses such talk as the grumblings of “one or two disgruntled people whose feelings have been hurt. There are no labor problems.”

While Davis believes in hands-on management, Schoellkopf has a decidedly hands-off philosophy regarding the Bel-Air. “I’m not involved in the running of any of my hotels,” she said candidly. “They’re professionally managed and professionally run. So somebody else has to take all the credit--and all the blame.”

An easygoing woman with a lively sense of humor, Schoellkopf would much rather talk about the beauty of the Bel-Air than about its balance sheet. “One of the most magical afternoons I’ve ever spent in my life was at the hotel,” she remembered. “I was sitting on the patio of my suite at just the time of year when the yellow blossoms were falling. It was like being in a golden snow shower. And as soon as the whole patio was covered with a golden glow,” she added, laughing, “the gardener came and swept up every blossom.

“He was too neat by far .”

In fact, the daughter of H. L. Hunt who is known as the wealthiest woman in America (and the wealthiest Hunt, at present) had stayed at the Bel-Air only once, “back in 1946,” 36 years before her Caroline Hunt Trust Estate bought the hotel for $22.7 million, outbidding Ivan Boesky by less than $8,000.

‘A Great Tradition’

Owning the Bel-Air was really the dream of Toluca Lake native Robert Zimmer, president of Schoellkopf’s Rosewood Hotels. “It had a great tradition as one of the best hotels in the world,” he explained over a Bel-Air breakfast omelet of caviar, smoked salmon and sour cream. “And I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I wanted it.”

At first, Schoellkopf and her children/partners, whom Zimmer refers to affectionately as “The Family,” didn’t want to buy a property outside of Texas. “But I told them that the Bel-Air would give Rosewood Hotels the high profile that it needed. And it has.”

Since buying the property, Schoellkopf has been inundated with invitations to L.A. benefits and parties. “She immediately became an important player in this city,” an associate explained. “Only she hasn’t wanted to play.”

That may change very soon. “I hope to come out there much more often in the future. In fact, I’m planning a trip (this month),” she said. “I came out many times when I first bought the hotel. But in recent years, my personal life has prevented it.”

Even though she’s not on the premises, Schoellkopf is confident she gets her “philosophy of life” across to the staff. And just because the Bel-Air is a status symbol, she doesn’t want the hotel’s staff to put on airs. “I don’t like fake snobbery,” she says matter-of-factly.

So it doesn’t matter when she requests her favorite Princess Grace suite and finds out it’s already reserved.

“Because I’m the owner,” she confided, “they can go ahead and put me anywhere .”

Which hotel is better?

To the guests and to the community, it’s like trying to compare apples and oranges. Or London’s Connaught Hotel and Claridge’s.

Celebrities like Kathleen Turner, Mel Gibson, John Denver and Paul Hogan prefer the Bel-Air. R. J. Wagner’s mother lives there full-time. And actors William Hurt and Marlee Matlin holed up there during the week of the Academy Awards.

At the Beverly Hills, it was actors Dianne Wiest and Sigourney Weaver and “A Room With a View” creators Ismail Merchant and James Ivory who made it their home on Oscar night. Other celebrity regulars include Sir Richard Attenborough, Diana Ross, Liza Minnelli and Meryl Streep. And Elizabeth Taylor, who has stayed in Bungalow No. 5 with all her husbands, books it whenever the whim strikes.

Schoellkopf maintains “there’s room for both” hotels. And Davis says, “some people like a very quiet, subdued atmosphere. And some people like a combination of both.”

Still, Davis said, being diplomatic, “I think they did a wonderful job of refurbishing an old hotel. And we hope that ours will be as well done.”

Indeed, the Bel-Air is slightly ahead right now if judged on looks alone. The Beverly Hills’ previous owners managed to redo the pool. But Davis is pouring millions into redecorating every room and installing modern gadgetry like two phone lines--one for receiving calls and one for making them--and Jacuzzis.

Except for a brief stay at the Playboy Mansion, actor Tony Curtis has called the Hotel Bel-Air home for the past year--ever since he kicked his drug dependency and sold his homes. “The recovery program told me to change to a less-stressful environment,” Curtis said. “And my residence now and forever will be the Bel-Air.”

First introduced in 1952, Curtis lovingly describes it as the “best wife” he’s ever had. “If I could, I would marry the Bel-Air tomorrow,” he said. “She doesn’t ask me where I’ve been all night. She doesn’t mind if I bring a girl home. She makes my bed every day, feeds me regularly, takes my messages faithfully and puts my laundry in those little boxes tied up with ribbon.”

The hotel has even given him artistic inspiration. He estimates he has painted about 50 canvases on the terrace of his $285-a-night one-bedroom suite, using as subjects every inch of his surroundings, from the landscaping to the furniture to the windows.

When traveling, Curtis stuffs his belongings into campaign chests and stores them in the Bel-Air’s basement. It’s one of the hotel’s customary niceties that when the actor returns, the chests are waiting for him in his assigned room.

Besides having a place to bunk, he especially treasures the “friendly privacy” that the Bel-Air cultivates among clients. But if Curtis had to pinpoint one thing to sum up the hotel’s special brand of gentility, he said, “It’s the fact that no one ever gets upset when I scramble over my terrace wall because I’ve forgotten my room key.”

Actor Christopher Plummer lives with his family in Weston, Conn. But his home away from home for nearly three decades has been the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Interviewed over breakfast in the Polo Lounge, Plummer finds the appeal is its nonstop activity. “I think it’s great fun,” he enthused. “You just feel you’re on the inside of lots of little dramas. I mean, there are always an incredible group of semi-foreign film producers who love to hang out at the pool with pretty girls.”

People, he said, “start behaving in a Hollywood way almost as soon as they’ve registered. Sometimes it’s amusing and great fun. And sometimes, it’s awful and vulgar.” But he laughs at the time his own wife, Elaine, “had herself paged at the pool all day just to impress her friends.”

Plummer usually stays in a $450 suite in the main hotel overlooking the pool. “But if I’m very bored, I walk past the bungalows just to make people think that I’m actually coming home to one.”

He uses nearly all of the hotel’s facilities. He indulges in “hysterically funny breakfast meetings” with his agent and plays tennis with the pro “who makes me look terrific” in the afternoons. At night, he prowls the Polo Lounge looking for buddies like Peter Ustinov. “And, if I’ve had enough drinks to give me confidence, I’ll even sit down at the piano and sing.”

Still, what’s most important to Plummer is the hotel’s informal ambiance. “Even though it’s enormous and rambling and hardly intimate, coming back time after time is like returning to family. And I pray that doesn’t change with the upgrading.”

But, still, a family can have its tiffs. “Oops,” he said. “Maybe I’ve said too much. Now, whenever I call for a reservation, they’ll always tell me that they’re booked.”

“Oh, no ,” the chief reservations clerk at the Beverly Hills Hotel said. “You tell him that he’ll always have a room. He’s one of our best customers.”