There is just over two weeks remaining before the 2014 Academy Awards telecast and our own Feast of Starlight celebration at the ‘One Dragon, One Party’ event on March 2. Make sure you don’t wait to get your tickets, this is a much smaller venue than in past years and tickets are going fast. You can find all the party info at our previous Party Post.
Let’s take you on a little tour of our venue, the historic Cat & Fiddle Restaurant and Pub in Hollywood, just to put you in the proper party mood for this little moot.
Long before there was a restaurant at 6530 Sunset Blvd., there was a Spanish Shopping Court built by Fred Thompson, housing numerous shops including Travis Banton’s dress shop. Banton, the chief costume designer at the time for Paramount Pictures, was one of the most important Hollywood designers in the 1930’s. Fred Thompson was both a famed Western acting star with Paramount Pictures, as you can see in the photo above on the left, and was a leading business man in Hollywood, with the Thompson Building being one of his lasting legacies.
As you can see, the front entrance to the building has barely changed in the 85 years since it was built. Like so many buildings in the Southern California area, this is built in the classic Spanish style noted for it’s solid white stone walls, arched entrance, wrought iron fences and railings and the red tiled roof.
Once inside the arched entrance there is a brick lined courtyard filled with trees and other plants. Back when it was built, there was a functioning well at the center of the courtyard, but today the centerpiece is a delightful fountain. The Mediterranean climate of Southern California makes dining outside on the courtyard patio a real treat nearly year round. Weather permitting, we plan to have a large screen outdoors on the patio so that you may watch the Oscar telecast while sitting under the stars.
While very Spanish looking on the outside, the inside of the Cat & Fiddle Restaurant and Pub is every bit the English Pub you would expect, complete with warm, cozy hearth, a dart board and comfortable tables and booths. The room on the right is called the Casablanca Room and sits at the far end of the restaurant with a window overlooking the courtyard. And while you may think it only natural that a restaurant in Hollywood would name one of their rooms after a famous movie, in this case, it earned that name because part of Casablanca was actually filmed on location here.
In the 1980’s, a British rock musician and a New Orleans fashionista relocated to Hollywood and opened up the first British pub in the Hollywood area. The Thompson Building’s back area went from Mary Helen’s Tea Room to the Cat & Fiddle Restaurant and Pub, and is still run by the same family that opened it 30 years ago. It is this authentic British style pub and lovely courtyard setting has brought the Tolkien fan community back to this venue time and again for Golden Globes viewing parties, Tolkien Toasts and TORn moots and it is why it was the obvious choice for a smaller, more intimate party this year. The fact that the Cat & Fiddle is less than a mile from the Dolby theater, home of the Academy Awards ceremony doesn’t hurt either.
So don’t delay, get your Tickets now before they sell out. The beautiful LA weather on Oscar Sunday at a wonderful venue like this, you just never know who may show up.
The Merry Inn Song
by J.R.R. Tolkien, first two stanzas as sung by Frodo in the Prancing Pony
“There is an inn, a merry old inn beneath an old grey hill. And there they brew a beer so brown that the Man in the Moon himself came down on night to drink his fill.
The ostler has a tipsy cat that plays a five-stringed fiddle; and up and down he runs his bow, now squeaking high, now purring low, now sawing in the middle.”
