Text by Anne Wallentine
Images by Blake Abes
“If variety is the spice of life, Club Casa del Mar offers a prodigious degree of seasoning,” the August 1926 issue of The Casa del Mar avows. The opulent, Italian Renaissance Revival “house by the sea” had opened earlier that year as a private beach club, with $10 annual dues and a wealth of leisure and social activities for its eminent members.
In the Roaring Twenties—the days of prosperity and Prohibition—Santa Monica’s beachfront became known as the Gold Coast, home to exclusive clubs and mansions for Hollywood stars and moviemakers like Marion Davies, Norma Shearer and her husband Irving Thalberg, Louis B. Mayer, Darryl Zanuck, and Cary Grant.
Club Casa del Mar was easily entwined with this flourishing seaside society: Dr. H. Clifford Loos, a local resident and brother of writer Anita Loos (of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes fame), served as the club’s first president. Garnering over 2,000 members at its peak, the club boasted a wide range of events for “people of culture,” including swims, teas, dinner dances, bridge parties, and balls.
This social whirl is deliciously documented in the club’s magazine. Dozens of issues from its founding through 1943 are preserved in the collection of the Santa Monica History Museum. The Casa del Mar (later restyled Del Mar Club Life) reveals the hotel’s Gatsby-esque heyday, breathlessly relating the glamour of its famous visiting celebrities, performers, and entertainments as well as its thriving beachfront sports.
“There have been such a plethora of celebrities, beauties and distinguished and gallant gentlemen disporting themselves upon the sands of late, that ye editor despairs of being able to even name them all,” a 1926 column in the club’s magazine despaired.
Actors Clark Gable, Greta Garbo and Leo Carrillo made regular appearances, while “attractive Gloria Stuart, popular actress and daughter of Mrs. Fred Finch of Del Mar Club, is another charming celebrity who spends many of her leisure hours enjoying our beautiful beach,” a May 1934 issue noted. The young woman photographed smiling on the beach in a bathing cap starred in pre-Code films and, many decades later, would become known for her role as the aged protagonist of Titanic.
If variety is the spice of life, Club Casa del Mar offers a prodigious degree of seasoning.
The club also lived up to Prohibition-era notoriety with a speakeasy and slot machines—but the magazines remained circumspect about these illegal entertainments. In 1927, the social calendar listed a masquerade ball, a bewigged “Colonial Ball” celebrating George Washington’s birthday, and daily events including concerts and bridge on Monday, “fashion show promenades” every Tuesday, Radio Night on Wednesday, and dinner dances on Thursday and Saturday. By 1934, barbecues, dance lessons, and horseback rides had taken over most weekday slots, and bridge parties were relegated to Friday. A “Gay Nineties Nite” took place in September, because “it’s a riot to be mid-Victorian for one evening. What larks!”
With such a robust social season, the magazine’s gossip and social columns were never short of fodder. In just one month, the club counted a Russian prince, a Mexican soprano, and visiting Pasadena and East Coast socialites among its visitors. Fashion never went unnoticed, either: a 1926 gossip column remarked on the daring and “intriguing” trousers worn by a lady—under a long coat—that were nevertheless “ravishingly becoming.”
Behind each issue’s brightly colored covers, decorated with mermaids and seahorses, beach sports took on equal importance with society reports. Men’s and women’s swim races, profiles on the season’s teams and swimming champions, surfing and volleyball competitions were recounted with gusto. The club also rolled out the red carpet to serve as the South Coast Corinthian Yacht Club headquarters for the annual Pacific Coast Regatta.
Casa del Mar also hosted numerous benefit events, including an Easter luncheon and fashion show for 600 people in 1934. The club’s position as “the aristocrat of the beach,” as it was advertised in that same year, seemed assured. But 1941 saw the club appropriated by the U.S. Navy through World War II, and it did not attain the same prominence after its postwar reinstatement.
The club closed in the early 1960s, reopening as the contemporary hotel in 1999. Michelle Main, Director of Operations at Hotel Casa del Mar, says that this new incarnation revivifies the old club’s “vibrant and sophisticated luxury” and “timeless elegance.”
“The hotel has a relaxed, resort-like atmosphere, especially in the mornings,” Main says. Some guests will start their day with a slow cup of coffee on the terrace while reading the news. On the weekends, joggers, surfers, and sunbathers abound, while sailboats drift by on the water. The lobby bar fills up towards the evening, with guests still as drawn by the drinks and regular musical entertainments as they were a century ago.
During the week, Main says, the restaurant Terrazza hosts “Santa Monica’s power breakfast and lunch crowd, where business deals often unfold over our famous ricotta pancakes.” While still a place for movers and shakers, given its beginnings as a private club, Main says, “the hotel continues to evoke a sense of exclusivity and intimacy. Many guests even tell me they try to keep Casa their little secret to ensure it remains their private oasis.”
After almost a century, the club’s lively, exclusive grandeur endures.
