LIGHTS, CAMERA… HOTELS

Dirk Bogarde in Death in Venice

Some scene providers can almost turn scene stealers, says FQR’s travel guru Kate Lenahan, who checks out a few famous five-star movie locations

There are two hotels in Beverly Hills that owe a lot of good publicity to a certain Mr Richard Gere. Both, coincidentally, are also linked via him to the world’s oldest profession – purely on a fictional basis, of course. In 1980 Gere sexed up The Beverly Hills Hotel for some of his trysts with the divine Lauren Hutton in American Gigolo, securing its place on the iconic map some four years after The Eagles did the same with their album cover for Hotel California. Ten years on, in Pretty Woman, Gere cinematically raised the profile of the Beverly Wilshire hotel, this time playing a man who paid for sexual favours rather than dispensed them. To this day, one still sidesteps a few overexcitable Japanese fans hanging out in the lobby taking snaps of the hotel that featured in their favourite film.

One other Beverly Hills establishment, the one who tends to annually contain the majority of nominees on Oscar night, is The Four Seasons Beverly Hills, which appeared as itself in Albert Brook’s 1999’s The Muse where the character playing the title role, Sharon Stone, insisted much to the pain of his wallet that she be booked into the largest suite for a lengthy visit in order to provide him inspiration for his writer’s block, a recurrent and professionally lethal virus in Tinseltown apparently.

Get it right – which means read the script and have an instinct of what will get a worldwide audience – and a general manager approached by a production company wanting to film in their hotel could generate many years of healthy bookings. The Park Hyatt Tokyo didn’t do badly when it lent itself as the hotel in Lost in Translation, its top floor bar a perfect setting for the coolness of the city when Bill Murray (as Bob Harris) ponders his existence over a cocktail scene.

Equally you cant go wrong allowing names such as Clooney, Pitt, Damon & Co to set their heist in your hotel as The Bellagio in Vegas so memorably did in Ocean’s Eleven. The Atlantis in Paradise Island, Bahamas, happily hosted James Bond’s visit in 2006’s remake of Casino Royale and, of course, The Plaza in New York has had almost as many starring roles as some leading actors, most famously appearing in Neil Simon’s 1971 Plaza Suite and children’s favourite Eloise in 2003.

Some hotel owners are delighted to handover their properties for a long, expensive film shoot. However, when the plot features an axe wielding caretaker in a hotel haunted by twins on tricycles – as it did in the case of the Timberline Lodge, Oregon – it’s easy to see why it was preferable for the hotel to retain its fictitious identity as The Overlook Hotel which supposedly existed in Colorado for Kubrick’s terrifying The Shining, and why all the interior shots took place at Elstree.

Also enjoying successful association with another Julia Roberts movie was The Ritz London in Notting Hill, for which I believe the hotel also provided real staff to play themselves in the relevant scenes. And finally, one of the most famous hotels to have a starring role in a classic film has been the elegant Hotel des Bains in Venice, where Dirk Bogarde so memorably portrayed a sick composer in Visconti’s Death in Venice, lusting after a beautiful Swedish boy then dying on the beach before having settled his hotel bill – a smart, if drastic, excuse when staying at expensive establishments, one might say.

-Kate Lenahan is FQR’s Travel Editor

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