Back to Pompeii

In Hollywood, every smog used to have its silver lining, but nowadays the lining is not even tinfoil. With TV competition rampant, and enough talent unemployed to fill a dozen De Mille epics. Hollywood is escaping into the past. Aging cine-moguls such as Mack Sennett, King Vidor and Adolph Zukor are publishing reminiscences about the good old days, studios are remaking old hits (e.g., The Covered Wagon and Ben Hur), production schedules read like mail-order history (Demetrius and the Gladiators, Prince Valiant). But the most startling forays into the past occur at Hollywood's quainter eating and drinking places.

At the "Roman Room" of a restaurant named Sasha's Palate, the tired moviemaker can lie down to a juicy buffalo steak, in what Hollywood considers Roman fashion. Upon entering the candlelit, gold-draped room, the diners toss their shoes into a basket and recline on a five-foot-wide divan which stretches around the walls. Sinking into a sea of pillows (45 in all) and gazing at a projection screen showing a Roman garden, the guests are served by waitresses dressed in silky purple pantaloons and boleros. In addition to buffalo steak, Sasha's offers such items as suckling pig (dressed with lemon in mouth, maraschino cherries in eyes), lamb, baby goat, pheasant and partridge. Price of a meal: $6.50 up. Among the regular Romans, some of whom like to wear togas for the occasion: Robert Cummings, Ray Milland. Lucy and Desi Arnaz. Explains Sculptor-Restaurateur Atanas Katcha-makoff: "The Roman Room gives people a chance to be aristocrats, be elemental, to enjoy themselves like before the last days of Pompeii."

The Bohemia Club, dedicated to the age of chivalry, boasts more than 40 members, all of whom go through an elaborate system of probation, starting as pilgrims and gradually working up to burgher, squire and knight. They bear special names: e.g., a Hollywood physician is known as Knight Hypocrates or the Pill Peddler. Members carry swords and wear helmets, use what they consider to be antique language ("gnaw" for eat, "torch" for cigar), and engage in musical and beer-drinking contests. In the works: a club house with moat and drawbridge.

The Vikings, a drinking society, meets at a Sunset Strip restaurant, numbers among its members Victor Borge, Lauritz Melchior, Michael Wilding. The Vikings wear horned helmets and bearskin robes, and on special occasions blow an ancient Bavarian mountain horn. Their motto: "Work is the ruin of the drinking classes."

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