The Savoy: Great Hotels Through Time (Ch5)
We’ve all been tempted to do it — slip a fistful of hotel toiletries into our suitcases before checking out. The truly shameless will swipe a bathrobe or a pillow.
But when Hollywood superstars visit luxury hotels, they’re liable to want something more. Both Alfred Hitchcock and Katharine Hepburn demanded the mattress from their beds at the Savoy . . . and the management obliged.
In fact, so many guests are besotted with the comfort of horsehair, cashmere and wool bed fillings, we learned on The Savoy: Great Hotels Through Time, these mattresses are offered for sale . . . at £17,000 for a kingsize.
This dash through the hotel’s history, narrated by Fay Ripley, was torn between the desire to coo over the elegant surrounds and gasp over the scandals. Princess Di used to visit daily when her marriage was breaking up, and for her birthday, staff tried to cheer her up by filling her suite with balloons . . . 15,000 of them.
Marilyn Monroe stayed there, baring her midriff for the cameras in an outfit dubbed ‘the wiggle dress’.
And Oscar Wilde was accused of entertaining male prostitutes in its rooms, despite the fact that, in the 1890s, the Savoy was the first hotel in the world to have electric lights throughout . . . and Oscar found the glare a little harsh. Perhaps he was more handsome by candlelight.
But if the makers of this hastily assembled docu-puff had really wanted some Savoy scandal, they should have consulted the archives of the Daily Mail. That’s where the juicy stuff is.
One heated divorce case filled the pages for days, at the end of the 19th century, when a wealthy Piccadilly publican named Edwin Bratt accused his wife, Grace, of having not one but four lovers. Savoy bedrooms were one of her favourite love-nests.
This dash through the hotel’s history, narrated by Fay Ripley, was torn between the desire to coo over the elegant surrounds and gasp over the scandals
Marilyn Monroe stayed there, baring her midriff for the cameras in an outfit dubbed ‘the wiggle dress’ (pictured at a press Cconference at the Savoy Hotel to publicise her forthcoming film, ‘The Prince and the Showgirl’)
Princess Diana used to visit daily when her marriage was breaking up (pictured in 1997 leaving The Savoy Hotel after attending The Daily Star Gold Awards for Courage and Bravery)
When Bratt discovered an admirer had treated Grace to saucy underwear, he beat her so badly with his walking stick that it snapped. Sounds like she was well rid of him.
The hotel was still a favourite for assignations 80 years later, when Mick Jagger used to meet Jerry Hall there, much to the fury of his wife Bianca.
But my favourite cutting concerns the ghastly Lady Norah Docker and her husband Bernard. He was the chairman of industrial conglomerate BSA, she was a former nightclub dancer, and in the 1950s they were nouveau riche celebs of the trashiest sort.
In the Savoy Grill one evening, Lady Docker was slagging off an absent acquaintance at the top of her voice, using racist language. A visiting American, Mr L. Schwartzchild, and his friends were appalled.
They asked her to be quiet — and when she carried on, one woman stood up and threw a glass of water in her face.
Her face and hair dripping, Lady Docker said, ‘I suppose I deserved that,’ and stalked out. The Schwartzchild party was asked to leave through the kitchens, to avoid any further scenes. These days, they’d be cheered to the rafters.
