{"id":24327,"date":"2023-02-04T15:16:54","date_gmt":"2023-02-04T23:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/travelingboy.com\/travel\/?p=24327"},"modified":"2024-09-30T11:28:47","modified_gmt":"2024-09-30T18:28:47","slug":"celebrity-hotel-rooms-suites-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/travelingboy.com\/travel\/celebrity-hotel-rooms-suites-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrity Hotel Rooms & Suites: Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am an unabashed enthusiast of idolatry and hero worship and homages and there\u2019s nothing I can do about it. Perhaps color me a patron of the arts, with the closest I\u2019ll ever come to certain artists is by seeing their rooms or suites where they had once slept. Of course, the obvious way to enter the world of an artist is through their work of art. But you\u2019re on your own on that one.<\/p>\n

Granted, many celebrity hotel rooms and suites have been refurbished with mementos, books, letters, photographs and furnishings once the artist was deemed famous. So, for the first part of the series, we take a look at the images and history of the Hemingway Suite at The Sun Valley Lodge, the John & Yoko Suite at Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, and the Oscar Wilde Suite at L’Hotel in Paris, where he spent the last two years of his life.<\/p>\n

Ernest Hemingway:
\nSun Valley Lodge, Idaho – Suite 206<\/h3>\n

“Time is the least thing we have of.”<\/em> \u2013 Ernest Hemingway<\/p>\n

\"\"Hemingway\u2019s study at the Sun Valley Lodge. Photo courtesy of Sun Valley Lodge.<\/p>\n

Hemingway had slept above me. That is one floor up from my own room at the Sun Valley Lodge, while I was enjoying a winter\u2019s vacation at the resort. According to Sun Valley Lodge Press Department, it was love at first sight for the widely acclaimed writer and outdoorsmen upon his first arrival in 1939. The Sun Valley Lodge was new at the time, and executives invited a number of Hollywood celebrities such as Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman and Clark Gable in an effort to drum up publicity. Hemingway, an avid hunter and fisherman, was overwhelmed by Sun Valley\u2019s vast great outdoors which he found both recreational and inspirational. Despite his famous face known throughout the world, he enjoyed a sense of anonymity, preferring to be in the company of local people as opposed to the Hollywood elite.<\/p>\n

The PR department described the Pulitzer and the Nobel Prize recipient as a quiet, reserved man who spent most of his time writing and enjoying Sun Valley\u2019s terrain, where fall was his favorite season. It is in Suite 206 where Hemingway completed his masterpiece, “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” He would wake up in early morning and start writing, oftentimes standing up. He once commented that he never missed a sunrise. Visitors can stay in Suite 206, decorated with photographs of the novelist as well as a bronze statue of the author at his typewriter.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nThe Hemingway living room at the Sun Valley Lodge. Photo courtesy of Sun Valley Lodge.<\/p>\n

Later in my trip, a PR representative escorted me to Hemingway\u2019s final residence, a two-story house on 14 acres in nearby Ketchum, where he had taken his own life at age 61 years old. Hemingway never published any work about Sun Valley, with the exception of a single 1951 hunting article for True: The Man\u2019s Magazine. But, in 2020, educator Phil Huss wrote \u201cHemingway\u2019s Sun Valley: Local Stories Behind his Code, Characters and Crisis,\u201d which focused on Hemingway\u2019s adventures in Idaho.<\/p>\n

\"\" Left: Hemingway posing for a dust jacket photo by Lloyd Arnold for the first edition of \u201cFor Whom the Bell Tolls,\u201d at the Sun Valley Lodge. Photo courtesy of Sun Valley Lodge..<\/span> Right: Hemingway, Bobbi Powell, and Gary Cooper magpie shooting at Silver Creek, Idaho. Photo courtesy of Sun Valley Lodge.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Hemingway\u2019s Sun Valley legacy is best represented by the inscription on his memorial sculpture, which he initially penned as an eulogy for a deceased friend who died in a hunting accident. The eulogy was requested by the man\u2019s widow, but many believe it was about Hemingway himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cBest of all he loved the fall<\/em>
\nThe leaves yellow on the cottonwoods<\/em>
\nLeaves floating on the trout streams<\/em>
\nAnd above the hills the high blue windless skies<\/em>
\n…\u2009Now he will be a part of them forever\u201d<\/em> \u2013 Ernest Hemingway.<\/p>\n

For more on Hemingway, read Traveling Boy articles:
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