James Ellroy & Trader Vic's

Reading an old Q&A with novelist James Ellroy, who's in the news as apparently a script he wrote based on the LAPD's Rampart scandal is brewing in Hollywood. Anyway, he's discussing how people are often shocked that he's not a liberal, and he mentions the following experience:

"During Bill Clinton's second term, as the Lewinsky scandal raged, I was at Trader Vic's in Beverly Hills. I was standing outside waiting for a friend when Judge Kenneth Starr got out of a chauffeur-driven Town Car right in front of me. He was with a woman I presumed was his wife, not a 22-year-old White House intern, and as he got out our eyes met and I smiled. He smiled back at me, and as he walked by me he stuck out his hand, and I shook his hand and I said, "Your Honor." And that was it. Here we were in Beverly Hills, and I was the only person within five miles who both recognized him and approved of him."

If you want to read the rest of the article, it's here:
http://old.nationalreview.com/dunphy/dunphy200511150827.asp

Cheers,
Rupe

We saw Ken Star at Trader Vic's Beverly Hills, too.

It was August 2005 - within days after Tiki Oasis.

I wonder if it was a favorite place of his when in town?

Too bad he, like Hef, didn't have the power to keep it open.

Nice, a Tiki and Noir connection !!

Well James Ellroy does refer to himself as the "White Knight of the Far Right". Despite his drug hazed early years, his political outlook is that of a William Parker era LAPD beat cop. That might explain why so many of his novel's protagonists are so colorfully portrayed as "hard-boiled dick-swinging White men".

It's too bad Curtis Hanson didn't use Trader Vic's as local color in his film. That might have given the place the same LA iconic status as the Formosa Cafe, Frolic Room, and (Richard Neutra's) Lovell House. It would have been much harder to shut down "that historic Tiki restaurant that was in L.A. Confidential".

[ Edited by: JOHN-O 2010-04-25 17:40 ]