The protagonist of the Hallmark Channel movie Beverly Hills Wedding is small-town wedding photographer Molly (Brooke D’Orsay). When her younger sister Sophia (Emma Johnson) gets engaged, Molly helps them win an all-expenses-paid dream wedding at “a historic Beverly Hill hotel.”
While planning the big day, Maid of Honor Molly is forced to spend more time with the Best Man, her ex-boyfriend Cory (Brendan Penny). Sparks fly again.
When the two couples arrive at the majestic Claremont Hotel, the concierge stands in the lobby and says: “Beverly Hills would be nothing without it.” He also claims it’s where legendary Hollywood movie stars Bogey and Bacall had their first kiss, and he points to the “Garbo’s favorite” table where she and Fred Astaire would play gin rummy every Thursday.
In real life, there is a Claremont Hotel in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Westwood, which was built in 1940 and offers 55 rooms, but it’s not what you see in the movie. According to Yelp, the Claremont Hotel is permanently closed.
There’s the famous Claremont Hotel in the Berkeley Hills, California, overlooking San Francisco, but the most historic hotel in the 90210 area code is the Beverly Hills Hotel (photos above and below), which since the 1920s has been closely associated with Hollywood movie stars and celebrities. Fred Astaire was known to read the newspaper by the pool!
Beverly Hills Wedding premieres on Hallmark Channel on Saturday, February 6 at 9 pm.
