THE GARDEN OF ALLAH

More Hollywood gossip glorified by all the beautiful people that were, and since columnist Graham is usually just grateful to have known them all, she rarely indulges in tit for tattletale. The Garden of Allah, originally Alla Nazimova's home, was converted into the main house (you were nobody if you stayed there) and twenty-five villas back in 1926. It seems to have offered opulence, poor maid service, late afternoon and all night festivities and an open ""liquor closet."" It would be hard to say whether anyone has been left out of the hotel register--it would seem not--but Miss Graham concentrates on that benign presence, Robert Benchley (two chapters), one of course on ""Scott"" who didn't really belong there, a less kindly inset on Dorothy Parker, with later comers Bogart, Sinatra, Faulkner, etc. closing the book before the Garden of Allah became just a residence for hookers and a tatty specter of its former self. The book will be illustrated and it will be read even if much of it is a reprise from what's around in the public domain.