The long shadow of a majestic hotel

Glancing down Hollywood Boulevard, you can’t miss a striking figure with a bright red neon sign that stands like a beacon above the tourist shops and restaurants below.

With its long history of hosting LA royalty, the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel serves as a reminder to the Hollywood of today that it forever lives in the shadow of everything that's come before it.

The brainchild of some of the biggest stars of the 1920s - Douglas Fairbanks and his wife Mary Pickford, film producer Louis B. Mayer and Sid Grauman of Chinese Theatre fame - the 12-floor, 300-room Hollywood Roosevelt still beckons to anyone with a taste for old Hollywood elegance. It proudly bears the name of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, and boasts a storied past that some claim has never fully ceased to be played out behind its beautiful facade.

Rumor has it the ghosts of some of the hotel's most famous residents, like Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift, may be gazing down from one of the windows, probably saying, "Hold my champagne," to the stars of today who are seeking fame and adoration. They've seen the highs and lows of what fame can do.

Your first impression of the Hollywood Roosevelt comes from the wide, elegant staircase that leads to its vintage rooms.

If you want to splurge a little, or a lot, you can rent the 2,875-sq.-ft. Johnny Grant Apartment with its private elevator, the Marilyn Monroe Suite with its wrap-around balcony and daybed overlooking the pool, or the Gable Lombard Penthouse, the 3,200-square-foot apartment where Clark Gable and Carol Lombard stayed the night before the very first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929.

Gable and Lombard only had a short walk to get to the ceremony in the hotel’s Blossom Room, where they joined about 250 other people for an event that only lasted 15 minutes.

Marilyn Monroe actually lived at the Hollywood Roosevelt for two years just as her modeling career began to take off. It’s there that she met her future husband Arthur Miller. Clark Gable and Carol Lombard also made the hotel their home, with a three-level penthouse that led to a rooftop patio.

Celebrities such as Errol Flynn, Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Shirley Temple, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald were also regular guests at the hotel.

It’s said that Bill “Bojangles” Robinson taught Shirley Temple how to tap dance in the hotel's ballroom.

More recently, celebrities such as Miley Cyrus, Brad Pitt, Jake Gyllenhaal, Scarlett Johansson, Eva Mendes, Angelina Jolie, Demi Lovato and Kirsten Dunst have enjoyed the hotel. Singer Courtney Love even passed out there once and had to be taken away by paramedics.

When rock star Prince stayed in the Gable Lombard Penthouse, he asked that it be decorated with white shag carpet and portraits of him in the style of Andy Warhol.

You may come for the cool ghost stories, hoping to see Marilyn Monroe's figure in her mirror, which had to be moved out of her suite and into the public stairwell because room guests reported they had seen her reflection instead of their own.

But once you check in, you'll fall in love with a space that transports you back to a time of elegance and beauty, where the biggest stars of yesteryear lounged around the perfect Hollywood pool, living the glamorous life that's become the stuff of California dreaming.

The Hollywood Roosevelt is a symbol of old-Hollywood elegance with its regal staircase and tree-lined walkways by the pool.

It’s fun to think about the people who came before us, especially the people who lived such different lives from our own.

Entering this historic space gives us a glimpse into the private lives of people who were adored by millions, yet became just ordinary people when they closed their hotel room doors at the end of the night.

If you get a chance to stay at the Hollywood Roosevelt, embrace the opportunity, ghost stories and all. Glancing out your window onto a Hollywood Boulevard where glamour has given way to some less-than-savory sights and sounds, you can muse about what Marilyn, Clark and Charlie saw below them when they glanced out onto the same street in a much different era.