SAN DIEGO'S HOTEL-SHOW-BUSINESS
Story and photography
by Eric Anderson & Nancy Allen

The InnSuites LaFayette Hotel & Suites, San Diego has 131 guest suites each named for a great name in movie history. The hotel has a colorful background: it was originally built at a cost of $2 million in a remote part of East County on El Cajon Boulevard, but now the city has grown around it. The advertisements used to say “a plantation-style mansion with an Olympic pool designed by Johnny Weismuller” but probably not many of today’s guests remember the man who so consistently smashed swimming’s world records. He won five gold medals in the 1924 Olympics, repeated the feat in 1928 before becoming the most beloved of all the screen Tarzans.

When local entrepreneur Larry Imig opened his so-called Imig Manor in 1946 its first guest was Bob Hope, other celebrities followed: musician Harry James and Betty Grable, his wife; famous swimmer Florence Chadwick, who would electrify the swimming world with her English Channel record-time swim; and screen heartthrobs Lana Turner, Jane Russell and Ava Gardner.

The hotel competed well with the US Grant and the Hotel del Coronado initially but Imig’s cash flow problem made him sell out within two years to three business men. One was hotelier Conrad Hilton, the first owner of the San Diego Chargers when they moved from Los Angeles. Hilton had his NFL office in the hotel.

For a time things went well. The Lafayette was on the main road from LA to Tijuana and an ideal stopover for the “jazz, martini and let’s party crowd.” Habits change, however, and the hotel fell on hard times and, in 1993, it was almost sold as low income housing. It was finally bought by InnSuites in 1998 and it opened a year later completely refurbished with its plaque showing it was now on the San Diego Register of Historic Landmarks.

The Hollywood glitterati had come in the 1940s to dine, drink, and dance to the music of Ted Fio Rito and other big bands in the resort's upscale Mississippi Ballroom. In another makeover, the ballroom, now a popular wedding and banquet hall, embraces the arts on weekends. You can come on Fridays to the comedy Sopranos’ Last Supper or Saturday nights to “ the longest running all-interactive comedy wedding in the nation,” Joey and Maria's Comedy Italian Wedding.

You don’t need to stay at the hotel to attend the “wedding.” All attendees are welcomed by the actors like regular wedding guests. The performers expect audience participation. And when actor Harold MacPherson, Jr. takes on the personna of father-of-the-bride Tony Cavatelli and confides, before the groom Giuseppe Gnocchi arrives that he, Tony, would “find this a happy day only if Giuseppe doesn’t show up coz he’s a bum” guests sense they’re going to have some fun more than at most weddings. The comedy was launched in Boston in 1990 and has traveled all over the U.S. It opened in San Diego 10 years ago, actually in the Lafayette Suites to which it has now returned in 2005. Details at comedywedding.com and if you’d like to be part of the cast call Stephanie at (800) 944-5639.

Bottom Line?
This is a fine old-fashioned hotel with a lot of specials to offer families. The neighborhood on El Cajon Boulevard may need work but the catering is great and the show surely doesn’t need any changes.