When I was of no fixed abode for a couple of years I did a lot of sofa hopping. I also did a lot of cat sitting. Installing myself in a friend’s pad for a couple of weeks always felt like a little holiday, and it still does. So whenever I am asked, I cat sit. Recently I looked after Milky who is a cat with impeccable taste in movie stars. Like me, she is a fan of Elizabeth Taylor and sat on my lap all the way through the recent Helena Bonham Carter biopic and the documentary about Liz that followed.
Sid and Kate were on their holiday in Massachusettes and found the perfect thank you gift for me, this fab book about what the great and good of Hollywood liked to eat when they were out and about.
There are lots of little titbids about which restaurants the stars favoured and what they liked to eat there, but my favourite bit of gossip was this about a place called Café Swiss on Rodeo Drive. It’s no longer there but the Hollywood crowd loved it back in the day. Betty Goodwin who wrote the book says this: “Gable usually came along, lunching on a corned beef sandwich and beer and reading the Hollywood trade papers in his favourite corner booth.”
So here is a picture of me doing my Clark Gable imitation, eating a corned beef sandwich and drinking a beer on my way to a weekend of camping. Cheers!
Here are those two lovebirds Clark and Carole at the Brown Derby, another restauarant that is documented in Betty’s Hollywood Du Jour book. Apparently Clark proposed here, how sweet.
