A SHORT HISTORY OF THE DARK HOTEL |

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William Butler Yeats made an appearance at the hotel during his lecture tour of the American West in 1913. It was at the Dark Hotel that Yeats met and dined with a young British comic film actor and director named Charlie Chaplin. "Two centuries collided like a shower of stars over dinner at the Dark Hotel last night," one reporter wrote in the local papers the next day. "To those who overheard the conversation, San Francisco's night life never seemed more brilliant."

The great American crime writer Dashiell Hammett lived at the hotel during the early 1920s. Hammett, who was employed as an agent for the Pinkerton Detective Agency, worked on the famous Fatty Arbuckle case while staying at the hotel. Scholars believe that the very first "Continental Op" stories must have been written in Room 36, while Hammett stayed there.

During the 1930s and 1940s, the hotel, which by now was showing its age, nonetheless continued to provide a cheap and bohemian haven for scores of musicians and entertainers. The Golden Gate Quartet is alleged to have written its powerful "Meeting Jesus on the Second Floor" while living at the hotel. In the early '40s members of Bob Wills' famous Western Swing band, the Texas Playboys, could often be found in the afternoon hanging around the hotel's lobby. At the time the Playboys had a regular Saturday evening radio program broadcast from the studios of local radio station KGO. Bob Wills stayed at the hotel during this period, as did the show's regular announcer, Jack Webb, who would later make a name for himself as Sgt. Joe Friday on "Dragnet."

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