Travel and tourism content producer for a number of years. Wrote many stories, including travel, for Canadian Motorist and enRoute, as well a stories, including travel stories in The Globe and Mail, Oakville Beaver and Hamilton Spectator and others.

Sample Article

Head:
Black and White Images in a Hollywood Landmark Hotel
Deck:
Los Angeles still the home of the fantasy and fable as the movie and film industry shows its dark roots.
Word Count:
2412

By: Carlie Oreskovich

If you ever find yourself down (but not quite) out in Los Angeles and searching for that elusive Hollywood Dream Factory, the realm of classic black and white films featuring plummy dialogue couched in pregnant plots with classically trained actors acting like gods rather than gods acting like actors, then the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel is the place for you. It certainly can bring back that old time feeling, especially if you are one of those who believe that the golden age of American film lies in a past that was ruled by true masters of the medium.
Opened on May 15, 1927, the Roosevelt Hotel was created by the Hollywood Holding Company, which noted among its esteemed investors Louis B. Mayer, Marcus Loew, Douglas Fairbanks and Canadian born and “America’s (adopted) sweetheart”, Mary Pickford. They collectively sunk $2.5 million on the structure, situated at what was then the center of the entertainment industry and in the region which was to become known throughout the world as Hollywood and represented a state of mind as well as real estate. It was worth noting that this took place in the heady days of prohibition, when selling liquor was forbidden and consuming took place behind barred and bolted doors.
Today there are better hotels, much newer, much more expensive, and far more exotic, but no where else can you feel and touch Hollywood history so readily, and no where else can you stay in the aerie, the illicit “love nest,” the 1,800 square foot suite Clark Gable and Carol Lombard occupied when they were a hot item and such liaisons were only vaguely implied and barely winked at but not described. We stayed there and for a brief period of time Hollywood swirled at our feet and we let the history rise up to engulfed us.
The 20s were a special time, a time when it seemed that everything was possible and society was far from self-conscious, and it was into that heady environment that the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel was delivered as a confirmation of that positive mind set. What better way to provide a focus and anchor to Hollywood than build a hotel in its midst and what better way to give it an identity and the blessing of the power politic than to name it after the nation’s 26th President, Theodore Roosevelt, a man noted for his ebullient personality, Rough-Rider image and the wholesale adoption of the adventurous spirit that characterized the west.
Oscar Born Here (more)