Ambassador Hotel
The Ambassador Hotel was a hotel in Los Angeles , California .
The building was on Wilshire Boulevard (3400), just after the intersection with Vermont Avenue in what is now Koreatown . It opened on January 1, 1921. The hotel was the winter residence of numerous prominent Hollywood actors from the early 1920s to the late 1960s, and its Cocoanut Grove was a famous nightspot. The ballroom and nightclub hosted the first major Oscar awards and many scenes in the film. The hotel was designed by Myron Hunt . Paul R. Williams later designed essential parts of the interior, such as the ballroom and the cafe.
On the night of June 4-5, 1968, a few minutes after midnight (local time), after a brief acceptance speech in the hotel's ballroom, California's new Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was shot in the hotel kitchen . The Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan was arrested at the scene of the crime. Kennedy died of his injuries a day later.
The decline of the Ambassador began with the assassination of Kennedy. There were also gang and drug problems in the area. Even the takeover of the nightclub by Sammy Davis Jr. in the mid-1970s could not prevent the hotel from closing in 1989. Until 2004 it was a film studio and location for the films The Womanizer , Forrest Gump , Apollo 13 , The Graduation , Girlfriends , The Fabulous Baker Boys , Catch Me If You Can , Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Bobby, as well as an episode of the television series Angel - Hunter of Darkness . When the Los Angeles political bodies decided to build a school complex on the extensive grounds of the hotel, a heated dispute arose with those who wanted the hotel to be preserved as a memorial to national history. Demolition of the building, however, began in late 2005, just hours after filming Bobby was completed , and was completed on January 16, 2006. The moveable inventory of the cold kitchen, in which Senator Kennedy was shot dead, had previously been dismantled and secured by supporters of the memorial project.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Colin Marshall, Los Angeles in Buildings: The Ambassador Hotel , KCET, March 10, 2017.
- ↑ ContraCostaTimes.com: Robert Kennedy slaying site focus of dispute ( Memento of February 12, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), January 29, 2006
Coordinates: 34 ° 3 ′ 34.7 " N , 118 ° 17 ′ 49.6" W.