The Ambassador Hotel was one of Los Angeles’ most famous hotels, which is no mean feat in a city that boasts the Biltmore, the Beverly Wilshire, the Chateau Marmont and many other famous, and infamous, establishments. The Ambassador’s renown came from its reputation as a place of entertainment and glamor from its opening in 1921 all the way to the 1960’s, during which time it hosted the Oscars Ceremony several times and had many famous residents (such as Sid Grauman, who lived at the Ambassador Hotel from its opening to his death).

The main thing that really separates the Ambassador from the other hotels mentioned above – quite literally in fact – is that it no longer exists. It joins a select list of LA hostelries, such as the Garden of Allah and the Hollywood Hotel, whose fame has outlived them, like a silent movie star whose name is familiar, but you’ve never seen one of their films. Well, the Ambassador Hotel had a far bigger role in shaping the world that we live in today than most people realize.

And that’s because of the other thing for which it’s famous, or more accurately infamous. The Ambassador Hotel’s infamy rests on it being the scene of Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1968, an event that literally changed history. Today his son has been nominated to become United States Secretary of Health and Human Services, so it seems like a very appropriate time to look at the tragic events surrounding his father’s death, and briefly think about what might have been had it not happened.

Early Years of the Ambassador Hotel

The Ambassador Hotel opened its doors with much fanfare on New Year’s Day, 1921. It was located on a fashionable stretch of Wilshire Boulevard, in what was then a fast-developing suburb three miles west of downtown Los Angeles. In fact the new hotel spurred the further development of Wilshire Boulevard into one of the main commercial and cultural arteries of the city (which it remains to this day).

Designed by local Pasadena architect Myron Hunt, opinions always differed about the architectural quality of the hotel’s design – one architecture critic commented in 1965 that “the exterior never had any redeeming qualities, and its original mediocrity has been botched by hideous intrusions of a relatively recent vintage.” – but, nevertheless, it rapidly became a landmark building. Certainly more so than the dairy farm upon which the hotel rose.

The Ambassador’s swift rise to prominence was speeded partly through its willingness to serve alcohol (despite Prohibition) and partly by the opening there, a few months after the hotel, of the Cocoanut Grove nightclub. Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino and Douglas Fairbanks, to name but a few, all became much-photographed regulars, and the nightclub’s reputation as the LA hot spot was sealed.

The club soon became known as Hollywood’s “playground of the stars”. Marion Davies famously rode a white horse through the hotel lobby en route to a costume party at the Cocoanut Grove, and stars such as Carole Lombard, Joan Fontaine and Gloria Swanson would face off in dance competitions every week.

Ambassador’s Rise and Fall

During its early years the Ambassador’s growing reputation for glitz and glamor was burnished by no less than six Academy Award ceremonies being held at the Cocoanut Grove from 1930 to 1943, and every U.S. President from Hoover to Nixon stayed in the hotel while visiting Los Angeles.

Even Nikita Khrushchev, Premier of the mighty Soviet Union at the time, was a guest – and was visited by none other than Mickey Mouse when he was unable to take a planned side-trip Disneyland in 1959. Even into the 1960’s the Ambassador remained a prestigious and important venue: Barbra Streisand was cast in the stage musical Funny Girl after her three-week stint at the Grove in 1963.

However, unfortunately for the Ambassador’s owners, by the late 1960’s the neighborhood surrounding the hotel was becoming less fashionable and lower income, which had a knock-on effect on the hotel. This is the background to the tragic events of June 5^th 1968 (fifty-seven years ago this year).

Robert Kennedy’s Assassination

That day saw Robert Kennedy give a speech in the Embassy Ballroom, following his victory in the California Democratic Primary over Senator Eugene McCarthy. After addressing his supporters Kennedy was ushered through the kitchens to the waiting press and, while walking through the pantry, he was shot by a Palestinian radical who had been living in the U.S. since childhood, Sirhan Sirhan.

Sirhan was incensed by comments Kennedy had made in support of Israel and also appeared to be suffering from mental illness (today he claims to have no memory of the actual shooting – but he has also stated that there was a second assassin who fired the fatal shots).

After shooting Kennedy several times he continued firing and hit five other people before running out of bullets and being subdued. Kennedy initially survived the shooting, but he died in hospital after over three hours of neurosurgery. 

The assassination of Robert Kennedy, just a few years after his brother John, has created one of the great what-ifs of history. Kennedy was almost certain to win the Democratic primary campaign, which would have led to a presidential election between him and Richard Nixon (a Californian, let it not be forgotten). It was a sliding doors moment for the U.S., and world, a single point in time that took them in a different direction.

What Might Have Been?

It’s very likely Kennedy would have won the presidential election, and it’s hard to think of two more different candidates than vigorous, upright, Bobby and dour Tricky Dickie (although he wasn’t known as such at the time). Kennedy had inherited the aura of Camelot, there was a sense that he would be fulfilling the legacy of his slain older brother, who’d been cut down in his prime. He was even more progressive than Jack though, and had allied himself with Latino union leader Cesar Chavez in the run-up to the primary (which probably led to his victory in the contest).

Nixon on the other hand had been a respected VP under Eisenhower, but was viewed as an underwhelming, even boring, candidate by 1968, whose time had probably passed. Both candidates opposed the Vietnam war, although Kennedy had much more support from the anti-war movement.

How narrow is the razor’s edge: if Kennedy hadn’t taken a shortcut through the kitchen, if Sirhan had waited somewhere else, if Kennedy hadn’t stopped to shake a supporter’s hand – we’d be living in a very different world. No Watergate to start with and therefore no Nixonian paranoia or impeachment. Civil Rights, one of Kennedy’s main priorities, would have been elevated to a level of much greater prominence. The bombing of Cambodia and Laos would not have happened…

But neither perhaps the U.S. rapprochement with China (with its fudging of the Taiwan independence question, one of the biggest geo-political tensions of our time). Who knows?

Nevertheless, history was definitely changed because of the events of that June night at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

The End of the Ambassador Hotel

Hardly surprisingly the assassination of Kennedy only hastened the decline of the hotel. Once branded as the Ambassador District the area around it gradually became known as Koreatown, the name by which the neighborhood is known today (often shortened to Ktown), due to many immigrants from the country settling there. In spite of a revamp the Cocoanut Grove remained mostly closed, apart from special events and filming.

Finally, on New Year’s Day 1989, exactly sixty-eight years after it opened, the Ambassador was permanently closed to guests.

However, it remained available for private functions and, perhaps more memorably, as a location for Hollywood movies. The hotel has made appearances in The Graduate, Forrest Gump and Pretty Woman, as well as many other movies and television shows.

During the 1990’s then New York real estate tycoon Donald Trump bought the Ambassador with the intention of building a shimmering 125 story golden tower on the site. However Trump’s plans, like many others over the years, eventually dissolved due to a combination of legal challenges and the sheer expense of redeveloping the property. After selling off much of the remaining fixtures, and the hotel’s signature crockery, he also off-loaded the hotel.

Ambassador Hotel: Demolished and Remembered

Then, in 2001, Los Angeles Unifies School District purchased the 24 acre property with the aim of building three schools there for the underserved neighborhood. It was the final nail in the coffin of the hotel. Four years later the Ambassador Hotel was demolished and, in 2010, the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools opened on the site, with no less than six institutions calling the campus home. At the time it was the most expensive learning complex in the U.S., at $578 million in total costs for constructing the schools.

Many felt that naming the schools after the murdered presidential candidate only continued Los Angeles’ uneasy (or should that be queasy) relationship with its own history. After all, why demolish a famous historic hotel and yet name the schools built in its place after a tragic historic event at said hotel? To remember or to forget?

Nevertheless, a learning complex seems like a fitting use for the old Ambassador Hotel site. Probably better than other options such as modern office towers, which would be unlikely to have the architectural merit of many other nearby buildings such as the Wiltern and the beautiful Bullocks Wilshire Building, both Art Deco masterpieces.

If you have any feedback on the Ambassador Hotel’s Date with Destiny please email us or reach out on social media, we’d love to hear from you.

– By Damien Blackshaw (Twitter)