The Full Timetable
Destinations
Where the stars went, and how to follow
Côte d'Azur
the French Riviera
The French Riviera
From Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief to F. Scott Fitzgerald at the Hôtel du Cap, the coast between Cannes and the Italian border has been Hollywood's summer playground for a century. Here's how to travel it in the footsteps of the stars.
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Havana
Havana
Cuba — Sinatra, Ava and the Hotel Nacional
From a mob summit at the Hotel Nacional to Frank and Ava's honeymoon mojitos and Ava Gardner's daiquiris-for-breakfast by the pool, Havana gave Old Hollywood some of its most extraordinary stories. Here's how to travel in their footsteps.
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Italian Riviera
the Italian Riviera
Portofino & the Ligurian Coast
Portofino, the oh-so-glamorous jewel in the crown of the Italian Riviera, was the default destination for Hollywood royalty from the 1950s on. Ava Gardner, Bogart and Bacall, Sinatra, and Taylor and Burton all came for the Splendido, the harbour and the view. Here's how to travel it in the footsteps of the stars.
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Las Vegas
Las Vegas
Sinatra's Town
Before Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, Vegas was a dusty desert gambling stop. After them, it was the entertainment capital of the world. From the Copa Room at the Sands to Cleopatra's Barge at Caesars and booth 22 at the Golden Steer, here's how to travel in the footsteps of Ol' Blue Eyes.
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London
London
Mayfair, the Strand & Knightsbridge
From Ava Gardner's quiet Knightsbridge years to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton's Van Gogh-on-the-wall theatrics at the Dorchester, London was the English capital that Old Hollywood passed through, performed in, and sometimes retired to. Here's how to travel it in the footsteps of the stars.
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Los Angeles
Los Angeles
Finding Hollywoodland
Walking in the footsteps of Bogart, Dietrich, Gable, or Monroe is easy if you know where to look. Ciro's, the Mocambo, Pickfair and Romanoff's may be gone, but it is still possible to immerse yourself in the quintessential Hollywood Babylon experience. Here's how.
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Miami
Miami
Sinatra's Oceanfront, Art Deco & the Surf Club
Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack made the Fontainebleau their stage, Elizabeth Taylor and Lauren Bacall favoured the Eden Roc, and behind a town the members built to protect it sits the Surf Club. Here is Miami as old Hollywood knew it.
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New York
New York
The Old Hollywood Guide
From Frank Sinatra's favourite steakhouses and jazz clubs to the Greenwich Village streets where Archie Leach became Cary Grant, New York is where you can still walk in the stars' footsteps — and where many of their haunts survive, some virtually unchanged.
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Palm Springs
Palm Springs
The Desert Playground of the Stars
The desert city where Frank Sinatra put down roots for nearly fifty years, where Cary Grant kept a guesthouse, and where the Rat Pack came to play. Twin Palms, Melvyn's, the Purple Room and the modernist landmarks are all still here to visit.
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Paris
Paris
The Ritz, the George V and a duck with a serial number
From Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra's romantic dinners at Tour d'Argent to Elizabeth Taylor's suites at the George V and Hemingway "liberating" the bar at the Ritz, Paris was where Old Hollywood came to disappear into luxury and reappear ten years younger. Here is the city as the stars knew it.
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Rome
Rome
Hollywood on the Tiber
Mid-20th-century Rome was once described as "Hollywood on the Tiber." From Ava Gardner's Mogambo nights on the Via Veneto to the birth of Taylor and Burton's "Le Scandale" on the Cleopatra set at Cinecittà, this is the eternal city as the stars knew it.
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Spain
Spain
In the Footsteps of Carmen
This is the country that bewitched Ava Gardner so completely she abandoned Hollywood to live there. Flamenco, bullfighters, Technicolor melodrama and a fascist regime's improbable tourism gamble — here is Spain as the stars knew it, from the Costa Brava to the tablaos of Madrid.
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