The New Yorker, February 20, 1995 P. 88
Talk story about the closing of Hollywood restaurant Chasen's. It has meant to Hollywood what Maxim's has to Paris and "21" to New York. It will be replaced by--what else?--a vast shopping center. Times change, but Chasen's hasn't. Its heart-stopping chili, salt-encrusted buttery "hobo steak," and banana shortcake are enough to set off tremors at the nearby Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, but its clientele has never cared. Which may explain why there were not enough patrons left to keep the place going. In its early days before it became elegant and its patrons well dressed and well behaved, Chasen's could be as rowdy as any of the trendy places that young Hollywood now favors. It was then the "in" place for a young generation that included Greta Garbo (reportedly in her first appearance in a restaurant), Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin, W. C. Fields, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Howard Hughes, Spencer Tracy, and Alfred Hitchcock. Surviving regulars include Ronald Reagan, Bob Hope, and Lew Wasserman. None of the above would have a Chasen's to go to but for the conviction of the founding editor of this magazine, Harold Ross, that his friend Dave Chasen was a better cook than comic stooge. Oddly, Chasen was a foil for a comedian named Joe Cook, who regularly struck him with a hammer in the course of his act. This job did not strike Ross as a promising launch for a career in show business. "If you ever decide to get out of show business and earn an honest living as a chef, I'll stake you to a restaurant," Ross said. His $3,500 investment enabled Chasen to build a nondescript structure in a bean field on Los Angeles's Beverly Boulevard and start the Southern Pit Barbecue, in 1936. Ross sent out the word to writers who were in exile in Hollywood to pick up movie money--Robert Benchley, Nunnally Johnson, James Thurber, Howard Lindsay, Russel Crouse, Alexander Woollcott, Charles MacArthur. They created the necessary buzz and the studio crowd soon followed. Mentions that Thurber was once reputed to have drawn for hours all over the men's-room walls. Chasen was overjoyed, and planned to have the walls varnished to preserve them. The next morning, however, a cleaning woman proudly reported, 'Some drunk scribbled all over the walls in there, Mr. Chasen, but I worked all night and washed 'em off."
