Tonight is the beginning of the TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood, California.  Josh and I have press passes to attend the entire event.  I am so excited.

This week I gave you a brief history of two of the venues being used for the festival – the Egyptian Theater and Grauman’s Chinese Theater.  Today, let’s visit the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel – the hub of the film festival.

Real estate investor Charles Toberman (responsible for both the Egyptian and the Chinese Theater) gathered a group of Hollywood players to invest in a series of real estate deals.  Among those players were Jack Warner, L.B. Meyer, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and Buster Keaton.  One of their first ventures was the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel opened in August of 1927.  It was named after Theodore Roosevelt.  When it first opened, it had  a roof garden with a fountain, flowers and awnings.  There was a dance band in the evenings.

For a while, the Blossom Room ballroom served as a hot spot on Wednesday nights but it was never quite as popular as the Ambassador Hotel’s Coconut Grove.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had their first offices at the Roosevelt.  And in May of 1929, they held the first Academy Awards, for the 1927-1928 movie season.  Best Picture went to Wings. Errol Flynn served bootlegged gin out of a back room.

In 1935, the gift shop was remodeled into the Cinegrill, a popular night club at the time.

The rumor is that the ghosts of Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift haunt the hotel.  Both stayed there for a period of time.

Shirley Temple took her first tap-dancing lesson at the Roosevelt from Bojangles.

Back in 2007, Josh and I were flown to LA by Ford to see a taping of the short-lived TV show, On the Lot.  Ford put us up in the Hollywood Roosevelt.  Read Josh’s account of that trip here and my account here. You’ll be interested to read about my thoughts on LA then compared to now.

Follow us on Twitter as we go to the TCM Film Festival beginning tonight.  @joshdaws and @jeremiahdaws.  We’ll be tweeting regularly about the films we’re seeing and the special guests we meet.  You won’t want to miss out.