The Hollywood Roosevelt

I checked in around 6pm on a Tuesday and the lobby was already doing its thing — dim, arched, smelling faintly of chlorine and candle wax, a DJ setting up for a party that wouldn’t start for hours. Across Hollywood Boulevard, tourists were photographing handprints in concrete outside the Chinese Theatre, unaware that the building behind them hosted the actual first Academy Awards ceremony while their grandparents were children.

That’s the thing about the Hollywood Roosevelt. It’s a working hotel with a pool bar and a DJ and a gift shop selling $12 shot glasses, and it’s also the site of more verified Hollywood history than the Walk of Fame stretched out in front of it. Both things are true at once, and the hotel has stopped pretending otherwise.

I stayed three nights, drank at the Tropicana bar twice, and got genuinely spooked once near the elevators. More on that below.

---

📍 Location	7000 Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles, California, USA
💰 Price range	~$300/€276/£237 per night
⭐ Best for	Old Hollywood obsessives, couples wanting a scene, pool-day people
⏱️ Sweet spot	April–May or October (warm pool days, thinner crowds than summer)
🚫 Skip if	You want quiet, or you’ve never liked a hotel lobby that doubles as a club
📖 Book	The Hollywood Roosevelt on Booking.com

Check availability and current rates →

---

The History Nobody Tells You

The Hollywood Roosevelt opened May 15, 1927, financed by a syndicate that included Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Louis B. Mayer, and the theater showman Sid Grauman — whose own Chinese Theatre sits directly across the street. It was named after Theodore Roosevelt, not Franklin, which is a detail the front desk will correct you on if you get it wrong. This was the hotel Hollywood’s actual founders built for themselves, and it was positioned, quite literally, at the center of the industry they were inventing.

A year later, that positioning paid off in a way nobody could have planned for the history books: on May 16, 1929, the hotel’s Blossom Room hosted the first-ever Academy Awards ceremony. It was a private dinner, about 270 people, $5 a ticket, and the whole thing — dinner included — lasted roughly fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes. Now compare that to the show you watched last year that ran past midnight. The Blossom Room still exists inside the hotel, and you can stand in it and try to picture an entire industry’s biggest night wrapping up before dessert was cleared.

Then there’s Marilyn Monroe, who lived in a poolside cabana at the Roosevelt in the late 1940s, early in her career and well before she was Marilyn Monroe to anyone but herself. Her first paid modeling shoot happened beside this pool. Decades later, staff and guests started reporting her reflection in a mirror near the elevators — the hotel eventually just left the mirror where it is and let the story do what it wanted. I looked into it for longer than I’ll admit and saw nothing, but I also didn’t linger.

Montgomery Clift is the other name that comes up constantly. He’s said to have stayed in Room 928 while filming “From Here to Eternity” in 1953, running lines and, according to hotel lore, practicing his trumpet at odd hours. Guests in and around that room have reported hearing a trumpet ever since. And in 1971, artist David Hockney painted a mural directly onto the floor of the Tropicana Pool — it’s still there, visible when the water is drained for cleaning or glimpsed from the upper-floor rooms looking down. The hotel slid through some genuinely rough decades after that — the 1980s were not kind to it — before a serious 1985 restoration brought back the character that had been painted and carpeted over. It’s now a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument, which is the city’s way of saying: don’t let this one go again.

Book the hotel where the first Oscars happened →

The Rooms — Real Talk

Standard rooms are fine — comfortable, dark wood, Spanish tile touches, nothing that will make you gasp. You’re not paying for the room. You’re paying for the address and the pool. If you want the room to actually contribute to the experience, book poolside — you wake up and you’re already at the party, or already ahead of it if you get there before 10am.

The suites are where the hotel’s actual design budget clearly went — higher ceilings, better light, some with private balconies overlooking the pool or the boulevard. Worth it for a special trip; overkill for a one-night stopover before Coachella.

Room Type	Price/night	Best for
Classic King	~$300/€276/£237	Budget-conscious, still want the address
Cabana/Poolside King	~$450/€414/£356	People who plan to spend the day at the pool anyway
Hollywood Suite	~$700/€644/£553	Special occasions, groups splitting a bigger room

Honest note: this is a 1927 building, and it shows in places — some hallways are narrow, some rooms are oddly shaped around original structural elements. Ask for a renovated room on a higher floor if street noise bothers you; Hollywood Boulevard does not go quiet at 2am.

Check room availability →

Food & Drinks

The Tropicana Pool is the real center of gravity here, Hockney mural underfoot and all. There’s a full pool bar serving the kind of $18 cocktails you expect at a hotel this famous, and on weekends it turns into a legitimate day-party scene with a DJ and a cover charge for non-guests — as a guest, you skip the line and the fee, which is worth remembering when you’re deciding whether a poolside room is worth the upcharge.

For a sit-down meal, the hotel’s restaurant does solid California comfort food — good for breakfast before you go be a tourist, less essential for dinner once you’ve seen Hollywood Boulevard’s options. And there are a lot of options: In-N-Out is a short walk if you want the LA cliché done properly, Musso & Frank Grill (older than the hotel itself, opened 1919) is a few blocks east for old-school steakhouse energy, and there’s no shortage of decent taco stands within stumbling distance if you’ve had one too many poolside cocktails.

Room service exists and is fine for late-night emergencies. It is not why you’re here.

Things I Noticed That Most Reviews Miss

The Blossom Room still hosts events, and you can sometimes just walk through. Ask the front desk if anything’s happening — I got a five-minute look at the room where the entire modern awards-show industry was born, standing next to a bride’s seating chart for that evening’s wedding.

The mirror near the elevators is smaller and less dramatic than the legend suggests. Everyone builds it up in their head. It’s just a mirror. That’s somehow the creepiest part.

Room 928 books up fast for exactly the reason you’d expect. If you want the Montgomery Clift room specifically, call ahead rather than relying on the website’s room-type filters.

You can see the Hockney pool mural from the upper floors without ever getting in the water. Request a room on a higher floor facing the pool and look straight down on a sunny afternoon — the mural is more visible from above than from pool level most of the year.

The pool gets loud well before happy hour on weekends. If you’re hoping for a quiet lounge-by-the-water morning, come on a weekday. Saturday by noon it’s a full event.

The Catch

Hollywood Boulevard itself is relentlessly touristy. Costumed street performers, aggressive CD hawkers, a general theme-park energy that has nothing to do with the actual film industry. It’s fun for an afternoon and exhausting by day three.

The pool scene is a feature until it’s a bug. If you booked a quiet romantic weekend and didn’t realize Saturday means a ticketed day party fifty feet from your room, you will be unhappy. Ask before you book if a specific weekend has an event.

The building’s age means real quirks. Some rooms have odd layouts, thinner walls than a modern build, and elevators that aren’t the fastest in town. Charming until you’re in a hurry.

Parking and general Hollywood traffic are a genuine tax on your time. Valet is pricey, and getting anywhere else in LA from here means committing to the 101 or surface streets at the wrong hour.

Is It Worth It?

	Worth it?
Old Hollywood history buffs	✅ Essentially a museum you can sleep in
Couples wanting a scene	✅ Pool, bar, rooftop energy all built in
Families with young kids	⚠️ Doable, but the pool scene skews adult
Business travelers needing quiet	❌ Wrong neighborhood, wrong hotel
Budget backpackers	❌ You’re paying for the address

Honest verdict: yes, especially for a first LA trip built around film history. The Hollywood Roosevelt is one of the only hotels in the country where you can point at a room and say “the first Oscars happened right there” and be completely accurate.

Practical Info

• Address: 7000 Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90028
• Check-in/out: 4pm / 11am
• Parking: Valet only, ~$55/€51/£44 per night
• WiFi: Included, reliable
• Nearest airport: Los Angeles International (LAX), 30–45 min by car depending on traffic ($45/€41/£35 rideshare)
• Getting there: Rideshare or taxi from LAX; Metro Red Line stop (Hollywood/Highland) is a two-minute walk
• Languages spoken: English, Spanish
• Pet friendly: Check directly with hotel

Final Verdict

The Hollywood Roosevelt opened in 1927 for the people who were inventing the movie industry, hosted the first Academy Awards two years later, sheltered a young Marilyn Monroe by its pool, and still has a David Hockney painting sitting under the water most guests never think to look for. It is loud, it is touristy outside the front doors, and the parking will annoy you. None of that changes what happened inside this building.

📖 Check availability at The Hollywood Roosevelt on Booking.com

Prices start at ~$300/€276/£237 per night, higher for poolside cabana rooms and suites. Book ahead for weekends — the pool events sell the hotel out fast, and you don’t want to find that out after arriving.

This page contains affiliate links. If you book through them, this site may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.