Beverly Hills Hotel

First the Hollywood Roosevelt, then L. A.'s Biltmore. Now another Grande Dame is getting a face lift: the Beverly Hills Hotel, just in time for her 75th anniversary in 1987. By the end of this year, every facet of the Sunset Boulevard landmark is expected to be renovated, from the 268 guest rooms to the recreational and dining facilities, including the famous Polo Lounge, but its exterior will remain pink. "Oh, definitely," Karen Gee, a spokeswoman for the hotel, said.

The landmark Beverly Hills Hotel, the pink and posh celebrity haunt purchased in December by a group headed by businessman Marvin Davis, has been sold again, for an undisclosed price. The buyer was identified only as Sajahtera Inc., but sources close to the deal, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the price was $200 million and the buyer was the oil-rich sultan of Brunei, Muda Hassanal Bolkiah.

A snag tied to the Ivan Boesky stock trading scandal has temporarily delayed the sale of the Beverly Hills Hotel owned by Boesky's wife and her sister's family, an informed source said Wednesday night. Two daylong sessions to sell the landmark hotel were conducted Tuesday and Wednesday by Brooks Harvey, the real estate subsidiary of Morgan Stanley & Co., the New York investment banking firm. It had been expected that a high bidder would be selected by Wednesday afternoon.

A partnership controlled by oilman Marvin Davis paid $136 million in cash for the landmark Beverly Hills Hotel, it was learned Monday. Additionally, Davis said in a statement that he plans to invest an additional $40 million to refurbish the 60-year-old facility on Sunset Boulevard. "I am very excited to be acquiring this great hotel," Davis said in a statement released simultaneously Monday by his New York and Los Angeles public relations firms.

The Sultan of Brunei, Hollywood's newest mogul, may rival the New York Stock Exchange as a source of rumors and panic. Since the announcement Oct. 6 that he acquired the historic Beverly Hills Hotel for a reported $185 million, the shadowy sultan--worth an estimated $25 billion before this week's meltdown on Wall Street--has set off a volcano of speculation, centering around whether he would convert the pink hotel into his own private palace on Sunset Boulevard.

The Pink Palace is definitely very pink, but it isn't much of a palace. The Beverly Hills Hotel presides over its namesake city, but discreetly and coyly. It isn't even remarkable until you get inside one of its grander bungalows. What is remarkable is that such a basically mediocre building, hidden behind layers of shrubs and drowned in pink and green, has become such a popular and successful landmark.

Howard Hughes lived there. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton fought there. Esther Williams swam there. Marilyn Monroe overslept there. The Beverly Hills Hotel is steeped in Hollywood legend. And pilfered from by stargazing patrons from around the world for nearly 80 years. The famed pink palace is putting out a special request this week for all those very special guests who have pocketed hotel ashtrays and stuffed signature towels in their suitcases: Please return them. For history's sake.

Things are bad all over. Even the world's richest man is having second thoughts about remodeling his Beverly Hills property. Not just any property, of course. It's the Beverly Hills Hotel, and the construction cost would be about $150 million. That's more than most people make in a lifetime, but more or less pocket change for a man worth $31 billion by Fortune magazine's estimate.

The hotel above is pink as a flamingo, with a gentle breeze tickling the surrounding palm trees and the pool water as deep blue as the cloudless Southern California sky. Two tiers of cabanas give the area the look of an inverted wedding cake, and the air is fragrant from nearby lemon trees. What could be closer to paradise than a cabana at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where Svend Petersen for nearly 45 years strove to put you in touch with your inner celebrity.