Dali Planet #99: Celebrity hangout
During one of his Tinseltown sojourns, Dali often hung out at the Cinegrill at the Hollywood Roosevelt. The hotel was founded in 1927 by Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, among others, and had Will Rogers, Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo and Gloria Swanson at its opening.
This is where the first Oscars were handed out, and where Marilyn Monroe posed by the pool for her first ad. Ernest Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald used to come by as well. Here too, little Shirley Temple took her tap-dancing lessons from Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. We’ve already seen Dali’s bizarre “Shirley Temple, The Youngest, Most Sacred Monster of the Cinema in her Time”.
Another time he did a collage entitled “Ginger Rogers with Butterflies and Roses”, and in 1955 he was commissioned by the producers of the film version of “Richard III” to depict its star. The result was “Portrait of Laurence Olivier in the Role of Richard III”, seen above.
