From The Players to Pink Taco: The Glamorous Evolution of a Sunset Strip Landmark
The Players - 1940
In the shadow of the Chateau Marmont, the slope of Sunset Boulevard has long been a crossroads of creativity, secrecy, and starlight. As the 1940s dawned, this stretch of West Hollywood began to hum with life—Ciro’s and the Trocadero drew the stars after dark, and right below the Chateau, a celebrated filmmaker decided to add his own sparkle to the Strip.
The Golden Era: Preston Sturges’ The Players
In 1940, Academy Award-winning screenwriter and director Preston Sturges—known for classics like The Lady Eve and Sullivan’s Travels—opened The Players, a French restaurant and supper club that quickly became the gathering place for Hollywood’s elite.
The Chateau Marmont, perched just above the club, didn’t yet offer room service or kitchen facilities in most units. For its residents, The Players was practically an extension of the hotel—a lively dining room where one could trade gossip, ink a deal, or toast a premiere just steps away from home.
The three-story, 12,000-square-foot venue was extravagant even by Hollywood standards. Inside were three restaurants, a barber shop, a hydraulic stage, and even a burger stand. But perhaps its most famous feature was invisible: an underground tunnel connecting The Players directly to the Chateau Marmont, offering an escape route for celebrities hoping to dodge reporters or admirers.
During its heyday, the guest list read like a who’s who of the Golden Age—Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, Charlie Chaplin, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Orson Welles, Dorothy Parker, Howard Hughes, and William Faulkner all graced its tables. The conversations must have been as heady as the cocktails.
But despite its glittering clientele, The Players’ star faded as quickly as it rose. By the early 1950s, Sturges’ penchant for closing the venue to throw private parties for his famous friends reportedly took its toll. The club closed, leaving behind a legend that never quite went dark.
Reinvention on the Strip
The address— NW corner of Roxbury Road and West Sunset Boulevard—refused to lose its luster. In 1953, it reemerged as Imperial Gardens, a Japanese restaurant that carried the celebrity torch into the next generation. For over three decades, it served Hollywood’s new royalty—John Savage, James Woods, John Travolta, and Olivia Newton-John among them—until it closed in 1989.
The site’s next act came with a thumping bassline: The Roxbury, one of the defining nightclubs of 1990s Los Angeles. For nearly a decade, it was the neon heart of the Strip’s nightlife, with Cher, Madonna, Tom Cruise, Prince, Sylvester Stallone, Christina Applegate, Eddie Murphy, and River Phoenix all spotted under its flashing lights. The club became so iconic it even inspired the cult comedy A Night at the Roxbury—though no scenes were filmed there.
By 1997, as often happens with L.A. hotspots, the scene shifted, and The Roxbury closed its doors.
Miyagi’s restaurant
The early 2000s brought another rebirth with Miyagi’s, a Japanese-themed restaurant and club that kept the party going until 2008. That’s when Harry Morton, of the Pink Taco restaurant family, took over the space. During renovations, Morton made a remarkable discovery: remnants of Preston Sturges’ original Players Club, including that legendary sealed tunnel to the Chateau Marmont.
It was as if the ghosts of Hollywood’s Golden Age had stirred again beneath the Strip.
Pink Taco, West Hollywood
For a while, Morton’s Pink Taco carried the torch—a more casual modern-day hotspot, but still with a touch of Sunset Blvd’s easygoing cool. But in September 2024, that chapter came to a close.
Though the name above the door has changed time and again, the spirit of The Players lingers. Few corners of Los Angeles capture the evolution of Hollywood quite like this one—from champagne toasts in the 1940s to neon-soaked nights in the 1990s, and every reinvention since.
Fingers crossed that the famous location, just below the storied Chateau Marmont, will again come to life with a new icon for the Gen Z to experience!