Life in a grand hotel: The Historic Westward Ho
Daniel González
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 27, 2002 12:00:00
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When anyone asks for a tour of the Westward Ho, the alabaster high-rise that still defines the Phoenix skyline and was once among the swankiest hotels in the West, the person who greets them in the lobby is Erling Eaton.
Like the Westward Ho itself, Eaton is a man of grace, tall and slender, but with a worn-out look around the eyes that reveals a life of hard living.
Eaton, 71, is the Westward Ho's resident historian and tour guide. He is also one of the former hotel's most colorful inhabitants. A chain-smoker with a phlegmy cough, he sometimes greets visitors with his pug-nose pooch, Killer, in tow. "Killer," Eaton will explain, "is short for Ladies Killer. The ladies love Killer and Killer loves the ladies."
Alfred Hitchcock immortalized the Westward Ho in the opening scenes of Psycho. Now, the Rhode Island-based owners of the Ho, as the building is affectionately known, hope to finalize a 20-year contract with the federal government to keep it a subsidized housing project for low-income seniors and the mobility-impaired. It was converted in 1981.
The new contract will disappoint those who view this as a lost opportunity to boost downtown revitalization by returning the landmark to its original splendor either as a luxury hotel or condominiums.
But for Eaton and the 291 other residents, it means the difference between living out their golden years in the faded glory of the Ho and a place less grand.
No longer a stopover for movie stars visiting Phoenix, a place where rich and famous came to party in the sun, the Ho at Central Avenue and Fillmore Street is still home to a cast of characters just as colorful as those in any film. Perhaps more so.
Many current residents couldn't afford to set foot in the Ho in its heyday. But now they find themselves welcomed at a palace that for them had existed only in motion pictures.
"I used to walk by and wish I had the money to have dinner here," says Ellen Bayliss, 54, who has lived at the Ho for 10 years.
Residents congregate in the pillared lobby, some in motorized carts, others leaning on metal walkers, under lavish ceilings, the same ceilings that awed a long list of famous guests with names like Gleason, Nixon, Newman, Loy, Gable, Earhart and Kennedy.
They wait for visitors that rarely come, or to be chauffeured off to doctor's appointments in call-a-ride vans. They sit in the courtyard, often with cigarettes wedged between their fingers and hypnotic gazes across their faces. Here, under towering palms, they pass the day near the swimming pool until it's time to go back to their rooms high above the sprawling city lights, rooms with some of the best mountain views in all of the Valley.
"That's where Paul Newman threw a television set off the balcony in the movie Pocket Money with Lee Marvin," Eaton will say as he escorts strangers around. "Over there, Elizabeth Taylor kept a year-round suite."
Familiar story
The Ho opened in 1928; Eaton was born in 1930. And like the Ho, Eaton once felt like he was sitting on top of the world. He had a good-paying job testing computers for General Electric, a three-bedroom house in the West Valley with views of the White Tank Mountains and a greenhouse for growing orchids. He was even married once, although that lasted six months.
What happened? Eaton is frequently asked. His answer will be honest, his voice a little shaky: "I'm an alcoholic."
Booze ruined his life.
It's a common refrain at the Ho, Eaton says, although by no means is every resident an alcoholic.
"This isn't a flop house," Eaton says.
Eaton only gets drunk on Fridays. A pint of bourbon. In his room. Alone.
"I'm not going to drag down anyone with me," he says. Then, on Sunday morning, two or three more drinks "to get rid of the shakes."
A shopping cart in his apartment on the eighth floor is filled with old pictures of the Ho. Eaton discovered them while foraging around in the Ho's basement. On a desk is a box stuffed with files chronicling the building's history, as well as the many famous people who stayed there.
Just as interesting, are the residents Eaton gladly introduces on his tours.
Residents such as Betty Lou Bass, a nimble-looking 71-year-old who sang in piano bars for years and swears her first husband was "one of the biggest Mafia guys in Chicago."
"I remember he robbed the Stevenson Hotel, him and two other guys," she says. "They only got two thousand bucks and they went out and spent it all partying. Somebody snitched, and he spent seven years in prison. Stateville."
And 86-year-old Cecilia Hopkins, who worked at the Ho as a hairdresser from 1945 to 1965 and once styled Myrna Loy's hair twice a day for two weeks when Loy was performing at the Orpheum.
And Louise "Scottie" Scott, the Ho's oldest resident, who swears she is 103 even though her birth certificate says she is 10 years younger.
"Damn, don't you think I should know what day I was born?" says Scott, who also claims to have worked as an elevator operator at a Chicago brothel owned by Al Capone and danced at the Apollo Theater in New York.
Two years ago, Eaton helped set up a computer room on the second floor with donated equipment. In rolls Larry Welch, a gruff looking man with no legs below the knees. He is 60, but his wooly beard makes him look older.
In 1957, Welch saw an ad in the newspaper about the Westward Ho: Busboys wanted. He went to the front entrance. The doorman wouldn't let him in. Go around to the kitchen, the doorman said. But the job was filled.
"They wouldn't let me in because I wasn't a star and I didn't have a pocket full of money," Welch says. "But I finally got in, 30 years later."
In the climactic scene of the 1972 film Pocket Money, Newman, playing a down-on-his-luck cowboy, tosses a TV off the fourth-floor balcony. In one of those eerie coincidences Hitchcock would appreciate, the very same apartment is now occupied by Scott Freeman, a Paul Newman look-alike who even appeared as an extra in The Prize, starring Newman, and The Entertainer, a TV movie, with Jack Lemmon.
Turns out Freeman, a one-time offshore oil worker and native of Los Angeles, is a bit of a thespian himself. On the same balcony where Newman once stood, he launches into a line from The Entertainer.
"Cashmere, smashmere!" Freeman bellows, waving a cigarette through the air for effect. "I don't care what kind of a bar it is as long as I can get a Nice Cold Beer!"
Penthouse living
In 1943, John B. Mills, a rich Texas oilman, bought the Westward Ho. He built a penthouse for himself overlooking the swimming pool.
Norma Roberta "Bobbi" Block, 56, lives there now with husband Sam, 66. The Blocks have cerebral palsy. They scoot around the Ho in motorized carts. Bobbi was born with hydrocephalus, or water on the brain. For years, she says without a trace of bitterness, "they called me the Water Head Kid."
This July, Bobbi marks 20 years at the Ho. The penthouse is a far cry from the institution where Bobbi lived for 23 years beginning when she was 1.
During physical therapy sessions, she recalls, a worker would push her until she fell, then stick her with a pin "just to hear me scream."
On his tours, Eaton hands visitors a booklet filled with chitchat about famous people who stayed at the Ho when the hotel was "better known than the Grand Canyon," as one former bellhop claimed.
There are colorful stories about Groucho Marx snubbing an autograph-seeking girl; Jack Dempsey passing out $20 bills in the lobby.
"It tickles the life out of me that I've got a key to let myself in," says resident Mariam Cheshire, 74. "I don't think I'll ever get over that I am living in the Westward Ho."
Eaton arrived in June 1996 after the bank repossessed his mobile home and his car.
"I'd rather spend money on booze than a house payment," he says. Now he lives on his monthly $730 Social Security check and pays $189 a month for rent.
In 1959, General Electric transferred Eaton to Phoenix. In 1971, the company laid him off. With his savings, Eaton bought a floral shop on Mill Avenue in Tempe. The floral shop had a walk-in cooler "just right for keeping the beer cold," Eaton says.
"I worked long hard hours there," he says. "But I didn't know the business. I didn't know how to run any business."
Six years later, he sold the shop, broke. Life was downhill from there. He dabbled in real estate, sold used cars, managed a U-Haul store. For a while, he even performed weddings. His last job was as a security guard.
All the while, he kept reaching for that bottle. Yes, he has tried Alcoholics Anonymous. He has been in detox three times. But always there is the question: Will the next drink taste as good as the last? It always does.
Eaton doesn't want anybody's sympathy. He's happy at the Ho. His debts are paid. Learning about the Ho's history keeps him busy.
It has been a long, rough ride. But he has survived.
Just like the Westward Ho.