December 12, 2012

YAMASHIRO HISTORY THE FOUR HUNDRED CLUB

Yamashiro was once home to the enigmatic and famous Four Hundred Club in the 1920s. While the social elite looked at film actors as second class, actor/director Frank Elliott felt the talented workers of Hollywood’s film industry deserved their recognition and a place in the upper crust of society. Eventually, for a short while, Yamashiro became home to the Four Hundred Club where motion picture actors could mingle, dance and dine together without being bothered.

At first, Elliott gathered his friends in the film industry including Charles Chaplin, Charles’ brother Syd Chaplin, actor Norman Kerry, director Clarence Brown, actors Raymond Griffith and Ward Crane, executive Jack Warner, and a few others, and founded the Sixty Club in 1924, which met at the Biltmore Hotel twice a month. Eventually other film industry people found their way into the Sixty Club including Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino, Jesse Lasky, Harold Lloyd, the Talmadges, Charles Chaplin, Colleen Moore, the Warner Brothers, Sam Goldwyn, and Louis B. Mayer.

Eventually Elliott and the Four Hundred Club purchased Yamashiro as their club house for a then trifling sum of one million dollars. The grand opening of the Four Hundred Club was hosted by Mrs. Sam Warner and was attended by such people as BeBe Daniels, Colleen Moore, Buster Collier, Rudolph Valentino, and Roscoe Arbuckle.

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