A Movie Star Getaway
Live, work, and play…
“I Drink Alone”…until the tour guides show up!
“I could go all night long”…
I LOVE TOUR GUIDES!
“Feeling Groovy” like the chic magnet he is…
I gotta line on you-“come up to my Penthouse sweetie pies, free Blow Pops for all Guides, the female ones that is!”
“That was the greatest tour I ever took, you’re so smart-Let’s go to my Limousine, it’s my vehicle baby, it can take you anywhere you wanna go, you’re gonna be a star!” says the part owner of the Sheraton Hotel.
Another night, another Limousine party …
1973-1978 A very big star with even bigger stories…
Hop-On pretty little tour guide-let’s visit the Spinning-Ice Tunnel of Love.
Telly was often behind the wheel of a stretch Limo, parked on a private road alongside the Hollywood Freeway-under the shadow of his hotel.
My Golf Cart, my Rolls Royce, my Limo, my Winnebago. And I live on the studio lot…Teamsters drive me around when I’m entertaining!
Mannix wishes…He was Me!
After Work- Bonding Time
Guides often spin stories about after hour antics that take place at Telly’s Bar located inside The Universal Sheraton Hotel. It’s as if Telly touched every guide in one way or another. His kindness and generosity often meant…Drinks are on the house, if you’re pretty and perform well with a microphone. This man can launch you career, or ruin it before it starts.
Tram Drivers often pick up our “twisted sisters” tour guides since we provide transportation for the inebriated hotel guests that jump into the first vehicle that pulls up to the fountain out front of this star studded hotel. I often am handed this job by tour dispatch.
The Hotel Shuttle Ride
My duties include safely containing and transporting passengers that sample our restaurants which are Fung Lums, Victoria Station, and Womphoppers.
Fung Lum’s, offers high end Chinese delicacies, along with beautiful Chinese tourists, pictured left-on the right is a Western Setting American menu that competes with Telly’s for customers. Telly’s Bar offers free drinks to potential Kojak fans while Womphopper’s offers mechanical bull rides. Guides can’t get enough of riding …Trams, Bulls, Limo’s -A ride is a ride.
Victoria Station is the restaurant closest to the tour ticket booths, my shuttle stops under a 50 ft.flag pole where guests throw their loose change in a fountain that adds up to about 30 dollars in coins and is drained of change daily. Tourists can’t wait to shell out money, and willingly we accept all currency.
Affectionately called The Clown Wagon, my open air hotel shuttle gets pretty cold in the winter, but most guest warm up with what seems like a hilltop of never-ending alcohol choices. It’s my job to safely bring you from one to another, one to another and one to another. I watch women get shit faced, one bar after another, and the stories get more risqué as they warm up behind me and and alongside. Often, they just want company, being travelers and are here for one reason for movie fun.
I look like I stepped out of the Smokey and the Bandit hit feature film, that is a film Universal Studios can’t promote enough, studio operations has a thing for Burt Reynolds. I wear a silver jacket with Universal Studios on the sleeves, like a cartoon character. I’m often propositioned by groupies wanting access to the Universal Amphitheater on show nights.
Like being the only “Straight guy” at Woodstock…
But I’m a red blooded American and some things are too good to pass on. Yes, I have shuttled girls inside the studio and after doing a brief private tour, I deposit them at the Artist Entrance at the Red Carpet behind the Amphitheater- never to be seen again.
But when opportunity exists and I’m a free bird, on the Clown Wagon, I basically own this mobile soap opera. One night just before I was closing the shuttle down for the night, The Sheraton was my last stop. Now being an empty wagon, I race my tram car down a private road usually reserved for smelly old diesel busses that lower already poor air quality with their never ending soot. That’s why we moved them as far away as possible as they sit idling all day.
BUT WAIT… as I glance around this vacated area one car stands out…it;s a limousine, and Telly Savalas is behind the steering wheel, parked with the driver side window down. He ignores my Clown Wagon and does a line of cocaine as I look in disbelieve. I pull along side his Limo in my Clown wagon. We make eye contact as I pull the” JAKE Brake.” Air locks up the brakes as I exit the driver seat. Telly recognizes me since after work I’m often seen with tour guides of which he has a hankering for.
I walk up saying “Hey Maggott” referring to his Dirty Dozen character. He chops a huge line and offers me the straw. I graciously accept-since I’m done hauling guests around. My nose feels the burn, as I’m asked “Where’s all your little Tour Guide friends?” Wanting an answer, he prepares another nose load. “You know a couple are strippers that double dip, since their job pays minimum wage.” Studio tours by day, burlesque shows into the wee hours.
“You know the guide Candy Cane she is a multitasker, I think she would enjoy a cocaine Blow Pop. Call it a speed bubble, “she barely conforms to rules here”…as I do another huge line. I’m feeling all right as I look at my tram parked in the middle of the road, starting a turn, with the yellow rotating safety light on the roof top looking like a Bat Signal.
I have been down this road a million times but never quite like this evening.
“Hey Telly, thanks, I gotta go park this thing, but- I’ll let Candy know Kojak was looking for her. I’ll come visit you, I’m here all the time and will give you a list of who’s naughty and who’s not. Berlin Busty is a tour guide actress you must meet. A shining, sexy German Tour Guide and actress on “Magnum P.I.”
I leave him with that caveat-as I give a farewell salute, and take off alongside the Hollywood Freeway inside….A Glamour Tram.
Written and lived by….Donnie Norden
Glamour Tram Stories 