ABSTRACT
In 1936, Dan Chasen was a vaudeville comic whose career seemed to be sputtering. At the urging of Harold Ross, the editor of The New Yorker magazine, and with seed money from movie director Frank Capra, he started his own restaurant. Located in West Hollywood, Chasen's became a hangout for much of the Hollywood film community. Regulars included Alfred Hitchcock, Jimmy Stewart, Ronald Reagan, and Groucho Marx. Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and John Huston would meet there to discuss how to fight the Hollywood Blacklist. The drink The Shirley Temple was invented there so little Shirley Temple could enjoy cocktail hour with everyone else.
