The Man Behind the Sunset Strip
He was a master of glitz and glamour whose flashy, celebrity-studded restaurants turned a sleepy stretch of hillside street into the fabled Sunset Strip.
Billy Wilkerson was already the founder and publisher of the Hollywood Reporter when he began dotting a one-time cow path with elegant nocturnal playpens for the stars--the Vendome, Cafe Trocadero, Ciro’s and Restaurant La Rue. He also found time to help kick-start Las Vegas’ transformation from a sleepy desert village with a handful of gambling shacks into an internationally renowned resort city.
But the center of the tireless Wilkerson’s attentions remained the 1.7-mile Sunset Strip, between Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, in its heyday the haunt of some of the most raucous and charming characters in Hollywood’s turbulent history.
Surrounded by poinsettia fields and avocado groves, his restaurants and nightclubs on the Strip were the places savvy press agents took starlets to have their pictures taken with established stars, where only the most famous commanded a regular table and where studio heads decided the fate of unwitting actors seated two tables distant.
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All of it, of course, made good copy and great photos for Wilkerson’s industry newspaper.
Wilkerson was born into an Irish Catholic family in Nashville, Tenn., in 1890, the son of a professional gambler who housed his family in plantations and shacks--depending on how the cards, the ponies and his luck were running. When Wilkerson was 7, his father--not exactly a long-term investor--won the rights to bottle Coca-Cola in 13 Southern states in a poker game, then swapped them for a theater, which he quickly sold for $4,000.
Later, while Wilkerson studied for the priesthood, he had a change of heart and turned to medicine. In 1916, before he could get his medical degree, his father died, leaving a mountain of debts. Billy quit school to help his family and managed a New York theater before moving on to more lucrative speak-easies.
In 1930, he migrated west to Hollywood, where he founded the Daily Hollywood Reporter, the first entertainment industry trade publication on the West Coast. Within six years, Wilkerson moved his upstart paper into 6715 Sunset Blvd. The printing was done in back; the editorial and business offices were upstairs. On the ground floor, Wilkerson ran an exclusive barbershop and an elegant haberdashery.
He wrote daily front-page editorials called “Trade Views” that drove official Hollywood mad. It was a feature that made and broke many film careers.
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An actor named Ronald Reagan became so angry over the paper’s scorn for his abilities that he twice stalked into Wilkerson’s office, only to slip and fall each time on the polished parquet floor. F. Scott Fitzgerald became so enraged over criticism of his lover, Sheila Graham, that he waited outside the paper, hoping to challenge Wilkerson to a duel. The author of “The Great Gatsby” and “The Last Tycoon,” finally departed--presumably for his regular stool at the bar in Musso’s--when a sympathetic passerby gently reminded him that gentlemen didn’t really duel anymore.
It was, perhaps, a fortunate departure, for although history records nothing of Wilkerson’s marksmanship, he was a formidable adversary in print. His personal motto was: “Never forget a friend, never forgive an enemy.”
Once, as Wilkerson raked an accountant over the coals for skimming off the top, the unfortunate culprit suffered a heart attack and died. With no remorse, Wilkerson ordered the paramedics to take the body out the back door of his office, because a thief didn’t deserve to exit through the front--not even into eternity.
Although the newspaper remained his passion, a visit to Paris convinced Wilkerson that Hollywood needed a restaurant with Continental class. In 1934, he reopened a former roadhouse as the Cafe Trocadero, a smart French-themed late-night club at 8610 Sunset Blvd. Soon, agents began moving their offices to the Strip, where they were not only closer to their favorite tables, but also exempt from city business taxes, because that part of the street traversed unincorporated county territory.
Stars such as Lana Turner, Sonja Henie, Robert Taylor, Tyrone Power, Fred Astaire, Jean Harlow, Clark Gable, Bing Crosby and William Powell sat in the dining room with its painted panoramas of the Parisian skyline, drinking champagne, before taking to the dance floor as Nat King Cole sang or Harl Smith and his Continental Orchestra belted out a rumba.
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Every Saturday night at the Troc, as it came to be known, the back room filled with the smoke from the cigars of Irving Thalberg, Darryl Zanuck, Carl Laemmle Jr., Joseph Shenck and Sam Goldwyn, who all had a penchant for high-stakes poker.
Would-be stars such as Judy Garland, Phil Silvers and Jackie Gleason got their starts by competing in “Amateur Hour” at the Troc on Sunday nights.
The chance to rub elbows with notorious, but impeccably behaved mobsters such as Hollywood labor racketeer Willie Bioff, Tony Cornero, Mickey Cohen, Bugsy Siegel and Wilkerson’s good friend Johnny Roselli, only made the Troc seem more glamorous.
In less than three years, the Troc took in $3.8 million and was remodeled three times at a cost of $271,000. In 1937, Wilkerson sold it with the provisions that he and his family and guests could dine for free and that food and beverages would be delivered to his house, as well as to his mother’s home, upon request.
In 1940, Wilkerson opened his next hot spot on the Strip, Ciro’s at 8433 Sunset (now occupied by the Comedy Store) with LaRue following. About the same time, he also opened the Arrowhead Springs Hotel, a gambling joint in the San Bernardino Mountains. But when Wilkerson recruited three known mobsters from the local Clover Club to run his gaming operation, law enforcement officers raided the resort and closed it down for good.
Five years later, Wilkerson--whose compulsion to gamble sometimes cost him $20,000 a day--conceived a novel kind of recycling: He would open his own casino in Las Vegas, where such gaming was legal.
Three months before Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel strutted into town, breaking hearts and noses, Wilkerson broke ground for the Flamingo on a 33-acre desert parcel purchased earlier that year for $84,000. Wilkerson had gambled away most of his construction money by the time Bugsy muscled him out of his ownership.
Wilkerson returned to his Bel-Air home and died in 1962.
The old Sunset Boulevard offices of the Hollywood Reporter are now occupied by the LA Weekly. Wilkerson’s ghost, however, is said to haunt what was once his second-floor office. Some say he sings during earthquakes, while others attribute to him a knocking sound that comes from beneath the original floor.
