The Times - UK (2020-08-01)

the times | Saturday August 1 2020 1GM 31

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Matt Chorley

Dominic Cummings the red card. So

the future of the Union is in the hands

of someone who, in May, was mocked

by a Downing Street source as “Mr

Nobody”. He’s not even an MSP yet,

so Davidson will stand in, having just

taken a peerage from Johnson. The

SNP definitely won’t have fun with

that.

Nicola Sturgeon, meanwhile, is

praised for her calm, skilful

handling of the pandemic, which

means that while England topped

the European league table of death

this week, Scotland was all the

way down at, um, third place. In

the whole of Europe.

It turns out that mocking

London’s slogan — “I don’t

know what ‘stay alert’ means”

— and a few days later adopting

her own totally different “stay

safe” message doesn’t make much

difference to the science. Sturgeon

is just better at politics.

Have you heard the government’s

latest Brexit radio adverts? Check,

Change, Go. Something like that.

Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre. Or maybe

it was Sunshine, Moonlight, Boogie.

Almost all of the people in the ads are

Scots. Because a voiceover artist

giving it the full “och aye the noo” to

promote something Scotland didn’t

vote for is just what will hold the

Union together.

The boyz who brought you “Take

Back Control” now have to sell

“Better Together”. Having spent years

railing against unaccountable rulers

in a faraway city, they struggle to

muster the enthusiasm for keeping a

long-standing economic, political and

social union together.

The Scottish Tories couldn’t arrange

a whisky-tasting in a distillery.

They’ve lost it. Their leader. The plot.

The Union, I fear, will be next.

The air has

gone out of

Scottish Tories

like bagpipes

under a

steamroller

‘N

o, no, no, you definitely

had it last. I wasn’t me. I

gave it back to you. It’s

not my fault you lost it.”

So the scene we’ve all

performed with house keys, wallets

and TV remotes is now being played

out by senior Tories keen to ensure

they are not the last one to have had

the Union before it was lost. Gone for

ever: dropped down the drain, left on

the roof of the car, slipping down the

back of the sofa of history.

Jackson Carlaw has decided he will

not take the blame and has quit as

leader of the Scottish Tories. Sadly

having a name that sounds like an

anagram of Union Jack Coleslaw

didn’t manage to spawn a range of

patriotic picnic snacks including

Devolved Scotch Eggs, Poached

Salmond and William of Orangejuice.

Instead, from the moment Ruth

Davidson quit 12 months ago, the air

went out of the Scottish Tories like a

set of bagpipes under a steamroller.

(Which is the best place for them).

After a year of Coleslaw at the helm,

half of Scots don’t know who he is (or

at least don’t have a view about him),

he has lost half of Conservative MPs

in Scotland, and support for

independence is soaring.

Six years ago a single poll put Yes

ahead by two points and panicking

politicians rushed north. We have had

three polls putting Yes on up to 54 per

cent, and nobody seems to notice. Or

care. Or know what to do.

During Boris Johnson’s flying visit

to Orkney last week he was

photographed with crabs, a stunt

notable only because he was in a

harbour and not an STD clinic.

With Coleslaw off the menu, all

eyes are on Douglas Ross, a part-time

football referee who quit as a minister

because the PM wouldn’t give

Listen to Matt Chorley

every Monday to

Thursday, 10am to 1pm

It was hard to get thrown out of

the Marmont, although some

succeeded: hard-drinking Richard

Harris, by staggering along the

corridors at 2am banging on the

doors and shouting that nuclear war

had started; Lindsay Lohan by

running up an unpaid bill of

$46,350.04 in under two months.

Some checked out before checking

out. The photographer Helmut

Newton had a heart attack in 2004

while steering his silver Cadillac

down the driveway. John Belushi

expired, aged 33, in Bungalow 3,

having injected himself with a

“speedball” of heroine and cocaine.

While other hotels rose and fell,

the Marmont retained its cachet. “I

would rather sleep in a Chateau

bathroom than in another hotel,”

declared Billy Wilder, director of

Some Like it Hot. Sure enough, when

the hotel was fully booked, staff set

up a bed for Wilder in the lobby of

the ladies’ loos. More recently, Jay-Z

and Beyoncé held an Oscar-night

party in the garage.

Back in 1994, I found the Chateau

Marmont cold and depressing. If

riotous misbehaviour was happening,

it was taking place very quietly. It felt

like an empty stage set, more

museum than hotel. I sensed Lauren

Bacall was uneasy to

be back among the

ghosts.

At a follow-up

interview in New York

a few weeks later, she

gave me a signed copy

of her book, with the

inscription “To the

Nowness of Life”. I

think I know what she

meant. She did not

want to dwell on the

past, and had moved

on to a more private

place. And now the

greatest Hollywood

hotel has done the

same.

Richard Harris banged

on doors shouting that

nuclear war had started

Ben

Macintyre

@benmacintyre1

If only this grand hotel’s walls could talk

Chateau Marmont was the No 1 place Hollywood stars went to party, sleep together and even die riotously

I

met Lauren Bacall at the Chateau

Marmont. (That is a sentence I

have always wanted to write.)

She was 70, still astonishingly

beautiful, funny, wise and, to a

young journalist, mildly terrifying: a

grande dame of Hollywood in the

grande dame of Hollywood hotels.

Back in 1944, Bacall had been

spotted with Humphrey Bogart at

Robert Benchley’s suite at the

Chateau Marmont, the beginning of

the most famous romance in movie

history. The two had met on the set

of To Have and Have Not. Bogart was

married to his third wife, the actress

Mayo Methot, and a guard was

posted outside the door in case she

turned up. “It was obvious Lauren

and Bogie were deeply in love,” wrote

the columnist Sheilah Graham.

Fifty years later, Bacall did not

want to talk about that episode. She

was publicising her book, Now, filled

with musings on the present, and

sticking strictly to that script. She

was not going to be drawn into the

past.

Some of the Chateau Marmont’s

myriad stories will never be told. A

place notorious for hedonism was

also known for its discretion. Which

is why Hollywood stars flocked here,

the beautiful and damned, to behave

extremely badly. “If you must get

into trouble, do it at the

Marmont,” Harry Cohn, the

Columbia studio boss,

instructed his hell-raising

young actors. And that is

exactly what they, and

countless others, did.

But now the grand old

hotel, having laid off its staff

owing to coronavirus, is

being turned into a

private members’

club. That seems

both sad and

appropriate.

The

Marmont was always a reflection of

Hollywood: from the glamorous

1920s, to the riotous 1990s, to the

self-publicising 21st century; from the

era of silent films to the modern

blockbuster. Once, the rich and

infamous traded here on semi-public

notoriety and ill-kept secrets; today,

the most valuable currency is

privacy.

For decades, the French-style faux

gothic castle above Sunset

Boulevard, built as an apartment

block in 1929, was the backdrop for

Hollywood scandal, freeze-frames

from film history at once dazzling

and salacious: “You could sense,

simply by walking down its corridors,

that the place had had its quota of

real-life dramas,” said Roman

Polanski, who lived here for a year in

a fifth-floor suite with Sharon Tate

before her murder by the Manson

Family cult. He holed up here again

in 1977, accused of sleeping with a 13-

year-old girl, and then fled to avoid

prosecution.

The hotel was Tinseltown’s chosen

place of assignation. John

Wayne, Grace Kelly and

Paul Newman all met

here for trysts. Jean

Harlow was said to hang

a “Gone Fishing” sign

on her door before

heading down to

Sunset Strip to look

for sex. Anthony

Perkins, married with

children, kept a suite

where he could

meet his gay

lovers. Here

Errol

Flynn

bedded each of his three wives, and

Marlene Dietrich. Johnny Depp

claimed to have slept with Kate Moss

in every one of its 63 rooms (though

I rather doubt he used the minuscule

one I stayed in, for $150 a night,

under the roof.)

Jim Morrison tried to swing into a

bedroom from a drainpipe and fell

two floors. Led Zeppelin poured cold

baked beans over their road manager

as he cavorted with a groupie.

Reclusive mogul Howard Hughes

rented an apartment overlooking the

pool so he could spy on women

through binoculars. Bette Davis fell

asleep while smoking and watching

her own movies, and set fire to a

bungalow. Robert Mitchum washed

the dishes wearing an

apron, and James Dean

jumped in through a

window to audition for

Rebel Without a Cause.

Dennis Hopper

crammed 51 people into

a single room for an all-

night party, but some

wanted to be alone.

Greta Garbo signed

herself in as “Harriet

Brown”. After her

divorce from Laurence

Olivier, Vivien Leigh

checked in with 22

pieces of luggage and

some Picassos to

brighten up the room.

Lauren Bacall met Humphrey Bogart, and Ben Macintyre, at the Marmont. Grace

Kelly, left, was a visitor, while Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate, right, had a suite

SILVER SCREEN COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES; ALAMY

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