In its 50-year heyday, the Brown Derby was where Hollywood hung its hat. The all-night eatery was as sublime as the top-grade, top-dollar caviar it spooned out, and as proudly low-brow as its buck-a-burger.
The first of four Brown Derbys opened on Wilshire Boulevard in 1926, across from the Ambassador Hotel. It was the only Derby shaped like a hat. During the 1920s, '30s and '40s, more Derbys opened, all serving as clubs for the Hollywood elite.
Legends revolved around Derby spots where Spencer Tracy, Ralph Bellamy and Pat O'Brien tippled into the wee hours.
The Derby was where Clark Gable proposed to Carole Lombard. Lucille Ball and Jack Benny lunched on Cobb salads, invented on the premises and named for the owner, Robert Cobb.
Cobb catered to the strange tastes of celebrity clients, concocting a grapefruit cake for dieting gossip columnist Louella Parsons and crafting a wedding cake of shortbread and caviar for Harpo Marx.
The second Brown Derby opened at Hollywood and Vine on Valentine's Day in 1929, drawing stars whose caricatures would line the walls.
Two years later, the third Brown Derby opened at Wilshire Boulevard and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. The fourth and last opened in Los Feliz in 1941.
The fourth Brown Derby is the last to remain standing, but it too is slated for the wrecking ball unless preservationists can save it. Its Brown Derby days ended around 1960; it has more recently operated as a nightclub and restaurant.
Its domed roof and lamella ceiling survived various remodelings. The ornate, oval bar, though not original to the building, was immortalized in the 1945 film "Mildred Pierce," in which Oscar-winning actress Joan Crawford recited the line: "Why should people come to eat and go someplace else to drink?" This Derby also portrayed the exterior of Arnold's Drive-In for the 1970s television series "Happy Days."
It opened in a building rented from director-producer Cecil B. DeMille, who had built it as a theater. When talkies came in, the theater became obsolete before it ever opened.
The Brown Derby undertaking began with a dare. Wisecracking screenwriter Wilson Mizner said to movie producer Herbert Somborn, who was Gloria Swanson's second husband: "If you know anything about food, you can sell it out of a hat."
Shortly thereafter, in 1926, Somborn, Mizner and theater owner Sid Grauman built the first Brown Derby and called it the Little Hat. But Mizner said it was big enough to accommodate the swelled heads of many a personality. Early patrons included Will Rogers, Mary Pickford and Rudolph Valentino.
