Ghosts of the Hollywood Roosevelt

GONZO

There’s only one city where that particular type of magic exists

By Rambo Van Halen · July 10, 2026 · 14 min read

My dad had a friend named Bullets.

He looked like a Bullets. He was short and stout and had a shiny bald head—which looked like a bullet. And his nose had been broken in several places at several different times.

I don’t know what Bullets did or how he came to befriend my father. He was always talking about movie stuff, so maybe he was in the industry?

But looking back I think he had something to do with porn. He had that look. Bullets was kind of sleazy. And he talked like a wiseguy—like a gangster. If he wasn’t straight up mafia then he was mafia-connected—just like my dad was mafia-connected.

From what I understand my dad was well acquainted with the West Coast mob. He probably knew Bugsy Siegal and Mickey Cohen. And he was a gambler—a big gambler. He did a lot of business with the Vegas casinos in the 50s and 60s—and for all I knew maybe he was still doing it in the 80s when I was a child and he was hanging out with his friend Bullets.

One night—I forget the reason—my dad took me to dinner at the Roosevelt. My coked-out trophy wife stepmom was there, and so was Bullets with his slutty trophy girlfriend.

I know a trophy wife when I see one. Aside from great beauty, they always look bored. Like they can’t be bothered to care. Like they have someplace better to be. It was the same with these women. Whenever they were in public they looked like they couldn’t want to leave. Maybe that’s a function of being a trophy. They were tired of being looked at, and weary of being on display.

Or maybe they’re just bitches. I can’t afford a trophy wife, so I’ll never know.

* * *

Bullets and my dad were World War II generation—getting into old age. But that didn’t stop them from dating (or marrying) women in their 20s.

The thing I remember about this dinner was my dad and Bullets explaining to their younger companions how, back in the day, the Roosevelt had been the place to be. That everybody who was anybody hung out here.

The Kennedys (Bob and Jack) hung out here. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and the rest of the Rat Pack hung out here. Even Marilyn Monroe hung out here—she actually lived in a poolside cabana for two years at the beginning of her career, and spent random nights in the hotel when JFK was in town.

But Bullets kept talking about the steam room. I didn’t know what a steam room was.

So I asked him, “What’s a steam room?”

And Bullets told me. It’s a hot room, where you go to sweat. But (and I forget his exact wording) the Roosevelt steam room was where the real party happened. Now as a child, I had no idea what the verb “to party” really meant.

I didn’t think about the Roosevelt steam room for a long time. And then, many years later, I was an adult and stuck in LA traffic.

Steve Jones, former Sex Pistols guitarist, had a great radio show on KLOS called Jonesy’s Jukebox. It was a proto-podcast format. He’d play music but also do extended interviews with various celebrities.

I was sitting in traffic on Los Feliz Boulevard listening to the radio and Jonesy was interviewing none other than 1950s/60s teen heartthrob Paul Anka.

Anka, after explaining that he really wanted to name the song Put Your Head On My Shoulder “Put Your LEGS On My Shoulder,” started talking about… the steam room at the Roosevelt.

What he said was a lot like what Bullets and my dad talked about. The Kennedys, the Rat Pack, a bunch of starlets (including Marilyn) and anyone who was anyone. All hanging out in towels, drinking, partying, and doing god-knows-what to each other.

So right then and there, stuck in the East Side LA gridlock, I decided I needed to find the Roosevelt steam room.

* * *

The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel opened in Hollywood in 1927. It was built at a time when Hollywood (the neighborhood) was the nicest and newest part of Los Angeles, and Hollywood (the industry) was the most glamorous business in the world.

By the time I moved out of L.A. in the 2010s, Hollywood was in rough shape. They don’t make movies in Hollywood anymore. And at no time in my life has it ever been a nice place to visit. It’s always been seedy as long as I’ve known it -- and like Times Square, Fisherman's Wharf, or Piccadilly Circus, the glory days have passed but the tourists never got the memo.

With closed shops, roaming un-policed homeless, and an extra layer of grime and filth, the Hollywood of 2026 is worse than ever. Work had brought me back to L.A. My client wanted to meet in Hollywood, so I booked a room at the Roosevelt. A welcome benefit of the urban decay was that I got a really good rate at the hotel.

I thought I’d live out my literary pretensions and sit at the bar at Musso & Frank’s, a few blocks away. But it was Monday, and the concierge informed me that Musso & Frank’s was closed. So I walked up the stairs instead.

I stopped at the mezzanine and looked down at the movie premiere after party in the lobby. They may not shoot movies in Hollywood anymore, but it’s still a good place for publicity. And a “World Movie Premiere in Hollywood!” still makes a great headline for the normies in flyover country.

The party looked nice. The lighting was great. The guests were attractive. They really nailed that old Hollywood glamor.

I pulled out my phone and took a picture. Then I felt a tap on my shoulder.

It was a tall thin black man in a black suit with a black shirt and black tie. He had a Secret Service style earpiece. Hello Mr Security Guard.

“No pictures sir.”

I put the phone in my pocket. He asked if I was a guest. I said I was in fact a guest. And then I asked him a question.

I asked if the hotel still had a steam room. I didn’t see it listed on the “amenities” page of the website, but I wondered if it was tucked away somewhere out of sight and out of service and out of mind.

He pondered the question and said, “No sir, I don’t believe we have a steam room.”

I didn’t believe him. I never believe security guards.

* * *

I woke up at dawn and took a walk. I wanted to shoot photos of Hollywood Boulevard before the sun got too high, and the light got too toppy, and the bums and superhero freaks and tourists showed up.

They were cleaning up from the previous night’s movie premiere. Crews with cranes were taking down the set pieces in front of the Chinese Theater, while other workers emptied water from traffic barricades. Schlock merchants were setting up tables full of tourist tchotchkes. A few bums wandered about. A few more were passed out in opiated bliss.

You can tell someone is opiated by the smile. It’s subtle, but it’s there. The corners of their mouth are turned up ever-so-slightly. I’m sure fentanyl gives you wonderful dreams.

I walked east down the boulevard and things were quieter. It didn’t seem like much had changed since my last visit—which was almost a decade ago. Things were dirtier. It felt empty—hollow. But that might have been due to the early morning hour.

The Scientologists’ extensive real estate holdings are still there. The Kress Building—the art deco masterpiece that was home to Frederick’s of Hollywood for many decades—that was still there too. And it was still empty.

I shot at the Kress back in the 2000s when it was a nightclub and sushi restaurant. The club closed in 2011, and the building has been vacant ever since.

Finding nothing of value, I walked back to the Roosevelt. I was shooting pics of the lobby when yet another security guard—this time a white guy—politely asked me to stop taking photos.

This was just as well, because I didn’t have the proper gear to shoot a large dark interior and the photos were going to look like shit.

I asked him the same question I’d asked the other guard the previous night. And I got the same answer.

No, he said, I’m not aware of any steam room.

* * *

I’m generally not a sentimental man. There are very few physical objects I really care about. Because it’s just stuff. Because as they say, you can’t take it with you.

But there are certain things—objects and places—that I do get sentimental about. Mainly things that were owned by my dad. Like his watches, and his cufflinks, and his old tobacco pipes.

He passed away when I was 12. He was an old man. And he’d lived a life. It was by no means an untimely tragic death. So I look at the objects he once owned, and I try to divine who this man was. I can’t help but think that maybe he left some sort of imprint, some part of his spirit, some sort of ghost in these things. And I wonder if I can find the ghost he left behind so I can somehow get to know who he really was.

* * *

Dejected, I went to the front desk to get a courtesy coffee. But then I saw the girl at reception. She was pretty. In her 20s. Dark hair. Olive skin. Vaguely European. Maybe Argentine.

She had a kind face. And I knew she would help me.

I said, “I’ve got a crazy request. I’d like to see the steam room and maybe take some pictures. Does it still exist?”

She said it’s in a part of the hotel that’s not open to guests. Then she asked me why I wanted to see it.

So I told her why. I told her the truth. I didn’t tell her everything. I held some stuff back.

I told her that my father owned this hotel for about a decade in the 1950s and 60s. I told her that he bought it with money he made working with the mafia, and that he had to sell it to pay gambling debts.

I told her what Bullets said, and what Paul Anka said about the steam room. How everyone who was anyone hung out. Sinatra and JFK and Marilyn Monroe, and (presumably) my father. And that I’ve been to this property many times and the one thing I’m curious about is the steam room.

Now, I left some things out.

I left out the part about how my own financial future is uncertain because I’m a man in my late 40s without even a high school diploma and my chosen career options have collapsed along with the collapse of the film industry, and lord knows writing and Twitter-poasting doesn’t pay, and that when my dad was my age he owned this hotel and a successful law firm and probably a bunch of stuff I don’t even know about, but somehow he managed to fuck up and lose everything, and by the time he died when I was 12 years old he was broke and penniless and didn’t leave shit for his young son, and gee whiz I could really use that Hollywood Roosevelt income now, and that’s not going to happen but maybe I can gain some sort of insight into this man I never really knew if I could just step inside the steam room. But then I realize that this is silly, because I’m a grown ass man with kids of my own and at this point in my life I shouldn’t be looking for my father, and I shouldn’t be looking for him like a lost little boy in the steam room of an old-ass haunted hotel.

No, I didn’t tell her all that. But I told her enough.

A look of surprise crossed her face. She didn’t know how to process my request.

So she picked up her radio and called for engineering. She said, “Can you come to the front desk? I have a guest with uh…” she paused to find the right words, “a unique request and it’s hard to explain on the walkie.”

The lead engineer arrived a few minutes later. I told him the same story I told the desk girl. About how my dad used to own the hotel, and how I’ve always been curious about the steam room.

He listened patiently. I could tell he was thinking “How does this guy know about the steam room?” He’d been around, and he’d probably heard the stories too.

He told me that the steam room was removed during a renovation in the 1980s. He said they used to have secret tunnels that went across the street. They were initially built to smuggle alcohol into the hotel during Prohibition, but were later used by celebrities to enter and exit unnoticed. But the tunnels were closed down and bricked up during subway construction in the 1980s.

He didn’t say it out loud but I assume the tunnels were how Marilyn Monroe arrived for rendezvous with her presidential paramour. Interesting.

He said he had some free time and offered to give me a tour. He showed me the penthouse and let me shoot photos on the roof.

He was a very nice guy. We talked about ghosts and the “hot” properties he’s worked at. And how this property was so “hot” with paranormal activity that often housekeeping staff rapidly quit and depart after ghost encounters.

He told me about Johnny Grant, the “Honorary” Mayor of Hollywood who lived (and died) in one of the penthouses. He joked that maybe the ghost of Marilyn Monroe got him.

He also told me that the hotel was going through a rough patch since Covid, but he was optimistic they’ve turned a corner and are back on the road to profitability.

For my part, I told him that it’s a great property. I told him I’d enjoyed my stay and that they’re doing a great job.

This was true. They were doing a great job. I’ve stayed in a lot of hotels over the years. In my road-warrior days I’d do upwards of 100 nights a year in hotels.

And I know the difference between a good hotel and a bad hotel—and no, it’s not just about price. I see it right away. I can tell as soon as I walk in the room. I can see the quality of the pens at the front desk. I can tell by the thread count of the sheets and by how well the bed is made. I can tell when I walk in the bathroom and see spotless grout.

I told him it’s a great hotel and that I’ll be back. And this was true too.

* * *

After the tour I poured myself a courtesy coffee and sat by the pool. A few English tourists milled about drinking their tea. The Brits love their morning sun. They love to eat breakfast outside.

I waited for the earth to turn and give me the perfect light. There’s a moment in the Los Angeles morning when the mix of the gold Southern California light with the ocean haze hits just right, and palm fronds catch the light and take on the ideal amount of lume where they’re almost too hot (too bright) to shoot, but not quite.

There’s only one place on earth where the light hits like that. There’s only one city where that particular type of magic exists.

Then the light hit. And I took the photo.

A few minutes later and the sun would have been too high and the palms would have been too hot. But I caught it at just the right time.

And it was perfect.