The Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel – or the ‘Pink Palace’ as we locals call it – is always the epitome of Hollywood glamour and chic. Its luxurious leather booths are filled with Tinseltown’s biggest stars who discuss multi-million dollar projects over £35 dirty martinis and its signature McCarthy chopped salad.
But this week – as the Pacific Palisades wildfires raged 13 miles away down Sunset Boulevard – the serene lobby looked like a war zone.
A line of some of LA’s wealthiest residents stretched out from the lobby and down the red carpet to the car park where harried, crying and distraught people arrived clutching children, dogs and, in one case, an African Grey parrot.
‘They arrived in their Teslas and Bentleys in just the clothes they had on when they fled,’ one hotel insider told me.
‘One lady was holding it together for her children and we brought them ice-cream from the restaurant while they sat in the lobby clutching the family labrador.
‘Then she burst into tears because she realised she hadn’t brought a single picture of her mum with her, who died when she was a child.’
Across LA, five star hotels like The Peninsula, the Four Seasons, Sunset Tower, L’Ermitage and the Bel Air (Prince Andrew’s favourite) are sold out.
Rooms are going for upwards of $1,000 (£819) a night and, while price-gouging during a crisis is forbidden by law, my source tells me there is a hierarchy around rooms.
‘You have the senior Netflix exec who is upset because some guy from Universal’s marketing department got a better suite. We may be in the middle of Armageddon but in a town like LA, status still matters.’
While none of the hotels will divulge their celebrity guest list, a devastated Kathy Hilton, the hotel heiress whose ‘It girl’ daughter Paris lost her Malibu home in the fire, was spotted in the Polo Lounge.
Tom Hanks and wife Rita Wilson have reportedly been sighted at The Peninsula, a hotel for power-brokers where disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein once kept a permanent suite.
Meghan Markle’s super-agent Ari Emanuel was seen sipping tea in the lobby while Jamie Lee Curtis reportedly consoled friends in the restaurant. Over at Sunset Tower, Jennifer Aniston’s favourite hotel, rooms are going for as much as $5,000 (£4,000) a night.
It seems incredible that just last weekend I sat by the pool in this hotel, with its shimmering views over the city, sipping a cocktail at a party to celebrate this year’s Golden Globes. That seems a lifetime away. Since then, at least ten people have died in six wildfires, and Pacific Palisades, home to Sir Anthony Hopkins, Ben Affleck and Harrison Ford, has been obliterated.
At the Art Deco Sunset Tower this week, the owner Jeff Klein, a hospitality legend who also runs the San Vicente Bungalows (where it is rumoured Prince Harry stays when in LA), maintained his customary discretion.
He said: ‘It’s undeniable that there’s stress. People have lost their homes, lost personal belongings. Hopefully what we’re able to provide is a quick escape from the stresses and anxieties that they’re going through.
‘It’s nice to just know that something that makes you happy, you can come back to, and it’s still there and it’s still standing. And it’s the same piano and bass player and same stiff cocktails.’
A source told me: ‘It feels like Titanic. We have the music, the cocktails, the lovely food, the fine linens, the piano player. But this awful tragedy is unfolding and people have lost everything and no one knows what they are going home to. It’s very sad.’
Yet despite the undeniable human tragedy and loss, standards have to be maintained.
My Pilates instructor told me he has never been busier, with women calling him to work them out in hotel rooms saying: ‘I don’t care what it costs, I need you!’
A PR for one of Beverly Hills’ best-known celebrity dermatologists said other women are using their time wisely, hiding in their rooms to have injectables in their lips, facial fillers and Botox.
‘We arrive discreetly and go straight to the room. They can rest and sleep and, when they emerge after the fires, no one will have a clue they’ve had minor tweaks done.’
As I reported in yesterday’s Mail, another bespoke medical service is couriering Ozempic and other weight loss drugs to hotels so the ladies who no longer lunch can maintain their weight loss.
A Hollywood real-estate agent who is a friend said to me: ‘I don’t mean to sound trivial but that was worrying me. I’ve lost 40lbs on Mounjaro and I have to keep it up. Thank God my doctor managed to get it for me and sent it over to the hotel via Uber.
‘I’ve lost everything but I’ll be damned if this crisis is going to make me fat again.’
Meanwhile, there are the pets to think about. Demi Moore is one of many evacuees bunking up with their dogs – though the actress, who was a first-time Golden Globe winner last weekend – has nine of them. She and her daughters Rumer and Scout Willis are staying with the pampered pooches, including a 1.5lb Chihuahua called Pilaf, at L’Ermitage, a $900 (£737) a night hotel in Beverly Hills.
A source says: ‘There are dogs everywhere in the hotel. Staff are running around with pooper scoopers but no one minds. It’s lovely to have them around with their gentle energy. There’s non-stop barking and chaos but it’s fun.’
At the Beverly Hills Hotel, plans are in motion to install a fake fire hydrant and patch of grass away from the main pool area ‘to give the dogs their own space and to stop the smell of urine wafting over the pool’. The fires have inspired many acts of kindness in this notoriously cut-throat city.
Chef Wolfgang Puck, who caters for the Governor’s Ball at the Oscars each year, is offering free meals to firemen at his five-star eatery, Spago, where his classic ‘Beverly Hills pizza’ of salmon and caviar goes for around £50.
Other celebrities, including the singer John Legend – currently holed up in a hotel with wife Chrissy Teigen, their four children, four dogs and bearded dragon – have reportedly sent out their private chefs with food for exhausted fire fighters and police manning the barricades around Pacific Palisades.
Jamie Lee Curtis donated $1 million to relief efforts and, as of last night, I was being told other stars including Gwyneth Paltrow and Julia Roberts have pledged to match her donation.
Ms Paltrow’s ex-husband, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, has been calling friends in the music industry with talk of staging a concert to raise funds for victims.
A well-known therapist who has treated some of LA’s biggest stars sat in the lobby of the Four Seasons hotel on Thursday night offering free counselling.
‘The shock is wearing off and the reality is setting in and people are just now realising they have no homes, no schools for their kids, their future has been stolen and their past destroyed,’ he told me. ‘They just need to talk.’
But it is not all doom and gloom.
A new phenomenon called ‘wildfire hook-ups’ is taking off all over town. One single friend staying at L’Ermitage in Beverly Hills said messages on her Raya app – an exclusive dating app for celebrities – were ‘off the charts’. She ended up having a drink with a famous TV host in the hotel bar.
‘There have been a lot of hook-ups’ my Beverly Hills source said.
‘People are sad. They are drinking. They have a lovely hotel room. There’s a lot of “comforting” going on. Rome may be burning but that’s no excuse not to have hot sex and a great martini.’