Mitzi at the Marmont

In 2013, USA Today did an article on actress/dancer Mitzi Gaynor, which included the story of how she met her husband:

She was 18 years old. She'd just broken up with Howard Hughes, and her agent wanted her to go out to hear Harry Belafonte. She assumed he was some Italian singer. Her agent was going to send a guy to escort her. She was all dressed up in her black velvet outfit, sexily cut down the front. She opened the door to the penthouse at Chateau Marmont that she was sharing with her mother to find this tall handsome fellow ready to take her out drinking and dancing. He asked for Mitzi Gaynor. "I'm Mitzi Gaynor," she told him. "Don't you recognize me? I'm in all the movies." "I'm so sorry," he told her. "I only go to foreign films." She went outside to find he'd brought his old two-door Plymouth, which needed to be washed, and whose backseat was loaded with his dirty clothes. They arrived. She stepped out. Flashbulbs started going off. "I'm 18, I'm hot, I just broke up with Howard Hughes," she remembers. "I'm like Paris Hilton or something." And then his laundry fell out of the backseat onto the ground around her feet. Gossip columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons were standing together watching – one of the few times they got along, Gaynor says – and Hopper turned to Parsons and said, "Who's that with Mitzi?" "I don't know," Parsons said. "But Mitzi must really like him." And she did.

She married Bean on November 18, 1954, and stayed with him until his death in 2006. The above recently acquired photo shows Mitzi posing on the balcony of the Chateau Marmont Penthouse (room 64). For the backstory of that photo shoot, I consulted the best book about Chateau History, Life at the Marmont by Raymond Sarlot and Fred E. Basten.

Noted Hollywood photographer, Wally Seawell, was the person responsible for bringing [Howard[ Hughes to the Marmont. As associated of the famed Paul Hesse, whose magnificent color portraits of stars first graced the covers of Photoplay magazine, Seawell had been asked to shoot a series of glamor portraits for his latest protege, an unknown but promising teenage dancer-singer named Mitzi Gaynor. According to Seawell, the Gaynor assignment was one of his most difficult, even more challenging than his sessions with Hughes discovery, Faith Domergue. (“We took a million pictures of her, and nothing happened.”) “When Mitzi first came in,” Seawell says, “she was so unattractive. We finally had to call in hair stylist Larry Germaine, who completely did her over, creating an entirely new look for her. It took three days to get her ready to shoot, but we got some marvelous shots.”



During the lengthy and arduous “shoot” Seawell learned that Hughes intended to set Gaynor and her mother up in an apartment at Sunset Tower, but it first had to be redecorated. He contacted Walter Kane, Hughes’ right-hand man, to tell him that the penthouse at the Marmont was not only vacant but available for far less than Sunset Tower was asking. Best of all, the penthouse had just been redone by celebrated fashion and interior designer, Don Loper, who had incorporated a number of his own luxurious touches, such as black-and-white harlequin tiles in the entry hall and floor-to-ceiling antique mirrors encasing the fireplace. Kane called the Marmont immediately and secured the penthouse. When Gaynor arrived with her mother, she was overheard to remark, “Won’t it be wonderful? When I sit on the John, I’ll be able to see all of Hollywood!” Mitzi Gaynor remained at the Marmont until Hughes discovered he wasn’t the only man in her life. As Seawell remembers, “She was also seeing [talent agent] Jack Bean on the sly at night—after she had been out with Howard. When Howard learned about that, he dumped her.”

About the only way people today would know who Don Loper is would be if they watched reruns of “I Love Lucy.” In one of the most famous episodes, “The Fashion Show,” which first aired February 28, 1955, Lucy is in Hollywood and wants to buy a Don Loper original. It turns out even a basic little black dress costs $500 at the Don Loper salon (the equivalent of almost $6000 today). In order to prevent husband Ricky from getting mad at her expenditure, Lucy gets a painful sunburn, thinking Ricky will feel sorry for her instead of angry. It doesn’t work. Loper saves the day by giving Lucy the dress for free when she agrees to change outfits for the celebrity fashion show in which she will be appearing. A rather wooden Loper appears as himself in the episode.



Below is Loper’s harlequin tiled entrance of the Chateau Penthouse, which still exists today and makes it easily recognizable in the many film and TV appearances for which it has been used.



Back to Lucy…the tweed suit Lucy must wear only exacerbates her sunburn; Loper’s “fixing” of the collar does nothing to help poor Lucy’s discomfort!



Here are some of Loper’s fashions worn by the other celebrity wives, starting with a dancing costume called “Baldini” modeled by Mrs. Dean Martin:



Mrs. Van Heflin wears another dancing costume called “Palmer”:



…and Mrs. Forrest Tucker wears a ballgown called “Sonata” in the color “Pink Mink”:



Three years later, Shirley Temple would wear costumes designed by Don Loper on her TV series, “Shirley Temple’s Storybook”:



If you want to see the fashion show portion of the “I Love Lucy” episode, here you go!



See more Chateau Marmont photos at my main website.