With its cool marble walls and burnished yew paneling, the Grill Room of London’s legendary Savoy Hotel has not changed much since that evening in 1935–except that back then the men were required to wear white tie to supper. “She was sitting right there,” says the elderly gentleman, putting down his martini glass and pointing to a table for two nestled against a pillar not 10 feet away. “Except for seeing her on the stage, it was the first time I had ever set eyes on that exquisite face. Yes, she saw me, too. But she was with a young man who looked very much in love, and I supposed that they were, to put it vulgarly, ‘at it.'”
Before leaving the grill that night, however, Laurence Olivier and his first wife introduced themselves to Vivien Leigh and invited her and her first husband for a weekend at the Oliviers’ country house. “It was,” smiles Olivier, still gazing at the table through the mist of nearly half a century, “like any first act of the period, don’t you think?” —People, 1983
I walk past the Savoy Hotel on a regular basis on my way to or from the Maughan Library. Every time, I can’t help but gaze up and picture all of the famous people that used to (and probably still) frequent the place. The Savoy recently re-opened after a multi-million pound renovation, and this includes its most famous restaurant, the Savoy Grill. Everyone from Noel Coward to Marilyn Monroe, James Dean to Maria Callas wined and dined in the Grill. Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier met there, and, from the quote above, it seems Larry remembered exact details of that night for the rest of his life. The Savoy, like many other really old five-star hotels has a special allure about it.
