Polo Lounge

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The Polo Lounge is located inside the Beverly Hills Hotel at 9641 Sunset Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA. The menu "still offers a classic Neil McCarthy salad, named after the polo-playing millionaire." ^[1]

The Lounge has been described as "done up in peachy pink (as you might expect), with deep carpets and dark green booths, each booth featuring a plug-in phone. Pink tablecloths are accented with pink vases containing rosebuds; a wall of windows looks out on the sunny patio. Legend has it that Mia Farrow (and maybe even Marlene Dietrich) was banned from the Polo Lounge for wearing pants. You can expect to pay from $75 to $120 for dinner for two. (Breakfast is your best bet at the Polo Lounge, at around $21 to $37 for two.)"^[2]

The management has maintained a staff that is regarded as the best in the world for almost one hundred years (1912). Many famous deals have resulted from the seating arrangements at the Lounge & pool, including Robert Evans discovery and subsequent 5 decades of deal making!

Both the Lounge and the Hotel play a small yet significant role in the history of the Watergate political affair in 1972. The high command of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (Richard Nixon) in 1972 was staying at the hotel during a west coast fund raising trip, and having a breakfast meeting in the Polo Lounge when Watergate burglar G. Gordon Liddy placed his fateful call to Committee Deputy Director, Jeb Stewart McGruder. McGruder took the call at his table in the Lounge, and when Liddy realized that McGruder was obviously in a public setting he initially insisted that he (McGruder) travel to an Air Force base in Los Angeles to reach a private setting and a secure telephone line.

In the event, McGruder merely left the Lounge and went to one of the hotel’s pay phone stations and called Liddy back. Once fully briefed, McGruder went to one of the hotel’s famous suites and participated in a meeting with Committee Director and U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell, his special assistant Fred LaRue, and Committee Deputy Robert Mardian.

The hotel’s logged and charged long distance call records of the calls made from that suite; on the morning after the burglary, formed the basis of the evidence which convicted each of the participants of conspiracy and obstruction of Justice in January 1975