Morrison was always at the club to greet his guests and approached the entertainment bookings with a Barnum-like flair. Mocambo also boasted having some of the era’s top performers: Edith Piaf, Eartha Kitt, Dinah Shore, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, and Lena Horne. Errol Flynn once slugged Jimmy Fiddler for disrespecting him and promptly got a fork in the ear from the columnist’s wife. With such a highly charged room of celebrities, altercations were also said to be inevitable. Myrna Loy and Arthur Hornblow chose the venue to celebrate their divorce together. could be found deep in conversation with Norma Shearer.
At one table might be Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart and Burgess Meredith, while at another, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Mayer, Hedy Lamarr, Cary Grant, Rita Hayworth, Barbara Stanwick, and many more. Each and every evening, big stars flocked to Mocambo, even many of Hollywood’s more reclusive personalities made it their haunt, including such prominent patrons as Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Lana Turner, Carole Lombard, Clark Gable, Louis B. The $10 opening night charge hardly slowed the steady procession of people from parading under the outdoor canopy into the flamboyant interior. Harold Stein and his Strolling Violins played the club often. Paul Hebert and Eddie Oliver sometimes conducted. Phil Ohman, a long-time fixture at the Trocadero, became house bandleader. Maitre’d Andre was hired away from 21 in New York and August Roche, a twenty-year veteran chef of continental cuisine, pampered the stars with culinary treats.
His $100,000 investment garnered the finest décor and entertainment team money could buy. Morrison assured those concerned that the birds were enjoying themselves and kept the drapes pulled during the day to allow them extra rest.
The twenty-one parakeets, four love birds, four macaws, and a cockatoo were thought to be harmed by exposure to the nighttime noise and local animal lovers wanted them protected. The birds, in fact, almost prevented the Mocambo from opening. Flaming red columns with harlequin patterns, oversized ball fringe hanging from lacquered trees, walls with huge baroque tin flowers and Jane Berlandina paintings, striped everything, and a dazzling aviary of live birds created its over-the-top interior. Owners Felix Young and ex-talent agent, Charlie Morrison, who’d never run a nightclub before, created an extraordinary setting for their Mocambo restaurant best described as “a cross between decadent Imperial Rome, Salvador Dali, and a birdcage.” Allusions to a Mexican motif were carried out in a medley of soft blues, terra cotta, and silver. Another much-anticipated nightclub joined the Trocadero and Ciro’s on the Sunset Strip on January 3, 1941, at the site of the old Club Versailles at 8588 Sunset Boulevard.
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